*Walks by* *Comes back*

Oh. Hey.

Not much going on lately.

Sheri's parents were visiting the last week in June. Her dad is/was trying to find a job in the area because they think they'd like to move here. So far, not too much has come of that, but I don't think they've given up hope.

Rucht & McKenna had their annual 4th of July party on the 3rd. We had a lot of fun hanging out with people, playing kubb and watching fireworks.

My World of Darkness game is going quite well - they made it to the end of the first act. We have a little in-game and out-of-game downtime, and I'm currently working on some narrative for the different characters.

Our GenCon badges should be arriving sometime tomorrow. :-D

We're also in the initial planning stages of Gamesplosion 2010 - our 3rd local gaming con - taking place later in august. This one is, as of now, slated to take place at our house and I've been contemplating what that will entail/require. Also, I'm looking forward to hopefully running a game or two for this event.

Not much to report on work, other hobbies, or other personal stuff.

~PS

So it's saturday.

We don't have too much going on this weekend. I think we are/were going to go walk around at a nearby park (and check out some bike trails), but it's raining at the moment - so that might put a damper on things.


Last weekend, however, was pretty eventful. The first weekend in June is the date of two different local festivals.

First, we went out to Rogersville to the Shakespeare and Friends Renaissance Faire (warning: their website is pretty hideous). It should, perhaps, be noted that I'd never been to a Ren Faire before, so I didn't really know what to expect. I think I had more fun than I thought I would - which is not to say I expected not to like it, I just didn't really know what it would be like.
There were some interesting booths, a lot of impressive costumes and some amusing shows. In particular, I enjoyed the jousting. The guys doing it explained a lot about the competitions, equipment and everything that goes into it.
I took quite a few photos of the faire which I posted on facebook.

Second, there was the Blue Plum in downtown JC. I've been to this festival a few years now. Unlike the Ren Faire, there's not too much to write about it, but we had a good time walking around with our friends enjoying the atmosphere. We also went to a pizza place downtown where we had one of our other friends as a waiter - that was pretty cool (I didn't even know he worked there).


On some gaming and related stuff:

In other news, my WoD campaign has been continuing nicely, though we've yet to get Curtis into it. I've also added some house rules to the core WoD system (surprise, surprise).
I love dice. They give you a nice, tangible connection to what's going on in the game world and they provide an element of unpredictability that's still connected through the rules to what a given character is generally capable of. Dice are great - as a player.
As a gm however, I've found they drive me crazy. I'm trying to juggle the narrative and keep each of the players engaged in the game and I find it to be a huge distraction when I have to stop, roll dice, calculate results and then report numbers back. Therefore, I've basically modified the system such that the players roll all the dice. The WoD system in particular lends itself to this with some only minor tweaks. We're still kind of trying this out and there will still probably be times that I'll roll a dice, but most of the time I'd rather that aspect stayed in the players' hands.
I've also been working on several gaming side projects including another simplistic thematic rpg (like Bot, but completely different in theme) and a couple of board games (which I may or may not be able to manifest).

Patrick ran his Star Wars game on thursday and we ran into a little bit of a hiccup near the end where the mechanics kind of broke down the fun, as it were. I also, unfortunately, found myself to be getting a bit frustrated as I tried to interact with a scene in a way that didn't seem to be jiving with the rest of the group (mostly my fault for not being clear enough).
I mention this not to criticize the game or the players - because I think Patrick's running a great game and the players are participating well - but to point out that even good games can get bogged down by one thing or another. It's just going to happen.
It's easy to look back and say "oh, well person X should have done Y", but when you're actually in the game that's not always so apparent. Still, I think the conversation Rucht, Patrick and I had post-game (even though it was quite late) about how we might address certain issues in the future (both as gms and players) was helpful if only so we didn't all leave on a complete down-note.

Oh yeah, and we gamed at Patrick & Stacie's new house - which is a pretty cool place and about half the distance from here as their old place.

We're two weeks from hosting our FOURTH GitP meetup. This year is shaping up to be much like previous years - which is to say, awesome. As usual, there are some people who can't make it that we'd really like to see, but there are some others we're glad to see returning and a decent number of new people to meet. I think it's pretty cool that this has become a Playground tradition and that people continue to flock to our little town for a great time.

And finally, I think I'm actually going to get to go to GenCon this year!(!!!) I've been saying I want to make it up for that for years now, and I'm excited that I'll finally get to do it. In addition to the con itself, there are a few hard-to-find gaming books I'll be looking for, a few random people I'd kinda like to shake hands with, and a couple of forum communities I'll be looking to hook up with for general fun-times and hanging out. Edit: Badges have been ordered. :)

While we're up there, we'll also spend some time with my parents & Sheri's grandpa. Also, the current plan is to rent a uhaul for the trip back so we can empty out a storage unit Sheri still has up there.


~PS

First thing, as I mention in the edit of last post, I am enjoying my shiny new iPhone (which has been named Sadie, after one of the characters from Mouse Guard). In particular, I like the ability to always have a 'net connection, to be able to sync and always have my mac's calendar (which i nearly *rely* on these days) with me, to have a phone that isn't work related (and I don't have to worry about using it for personal calls), and for *Sheri* (who also got one) to have her own phone so I don't worry as much when she goes somewhere in our less-than-perfectly-reliable jeep. Also, text messaging is fun, having a portable pdf reader is handy, and I think I like the iPhone facebook app better than the actual facebook *site* - it doesn't have all the stupid clutter everywhere.

Sheri and I got our bikes out for the first time this year and went for a ride on the Linear Trail in Erwin last saturday. I think we went about 7 or 8 miles altogether, though at a somewhat relaxed pace. We saw a lot of geese and ducks and a couple of rabbits. It was a lot of fun and I'm hoping we'll get to ride our bikes a lot more this year than last year.

My World of Darkness game had session #3 last night, which was fun if a bit slower than previous sessions. I think it was still good, but I'm thinking over how to smooth out some of the bumps. We are still trying to get Curtis involved, and we're gonna try a new weeknight to see if it works better.

I've been trying to do some drawing lately - actually working on a character sketch for Rucht's Rogue Trader game. I'm pretty rusty at this sort of art. Also, I'd love to try a pc tablet/drawing pad.

Other randomness: Tony introduced me to a comic/graphic novel series called Fables, which is pretty awesome. You should check it out. Yes, you.

Looking ahead, our GitP 2k10 meetup (this will be meetup #4 :)) is fast approaching. We are sad that Ginger can't make it out this year, but hopefully she'll get to come hang out one of the subsequent weekends. The Igloo will be hosting a few other friends for the meetup though, including our former-local Ken who it will be cool to see again. The meetup is always a great time, and this year should be just as awesome as usual.

~PS

Well, we had a good weekend. My parents and Rylee (my mom's havanese puppy) came to visit, which is always a good time. Ally wasn't quite sure what to make of the little white fuzzball that ran around the house, but overall I think they got along.

There were, of course, the requisite "projects".

The roof's minor issue has now been completely fixed (which is good, because it's raining) and the downspouts on the gutters have been flushed out too. The jeep's had some small tune-ups - changed the fanbelt and a small vacuum hose. There are some other little things, but overall I was told the jeep was running well.

We also spent most of saturday doing what we can to map out a deck plan. I've been wanting to build a deck on the front of our house for a couple years. The project is still very much in the preliminary stages, but we're making some progress. What we need to do now is discover where our septic system is for sure (we're pretty sure already) and have the water line marked - because those pipes are in the area in question. Also, we need to either figure out how to get 18ft support beams or shorten the width to 16ft (which might squeeze one section). Still, we're making some progress.

In addition to home/auto projects, we had a great time hanging out. We went to bay's mountain park and went for a short hike and got soaked with rain about 3/4 of the way back to the car. On the upside, the rain cover for my camera case has been field-tested with great success.

My parents also, of course, had their shiny iphones. I decided a while back that I want one of these. We kinda need (at least one) personal phone, and if I'm going to add another bill to our monthly expenses, I'm totally willing to pay a bit more to get something *fun*. As of now, I think we're waiting for Sheri to decide if she wants her own phone and whether she also wants an iphone. She isn't sure how much of a smart phone's capabilities she would use a lot (at first anyway), but she doesn't really have any gadgets and this would be several in one. I personally think it would be kind of cool, if somewhat expensive. Edit: yeah, we did it. We now have shinies. Rather sooner than I would have imagined, but we had put it off for quite a while...


My World of Darkness game is now two sessions in and is going great. The players seem to be really enjoying it, and I'm liking the theme. Synopses' are posted on the Gaming page as useful. On a related now, I have now feared the entirety of the boot, and I've been poking around on the ftb forums. On another related note, I'm trying to figure out if I can pull off going to gencon this year.

Milligan's faculty/staff picnic was last tuesday, and that was cool. It's fun to talk to people we only see occasionally and meeting others.

A week ago last saturday was our friend Stacie's birthday party at Rucht & McKennas, and that was cool. I game with a lot of the same people, but that's a lot different from just hanging out. Plus, Stacie, McKenna and Jen aren't really gamers and they're really cool people - when we're gaming we sometimes "see" them, but don't get to interact with them much when we're roleplaying.

~PS

Wow, s'been almost a month since i've keyed something into the ol' blog.

Probably not much to talk about has happened in that interim. Let's see...

I previously mentioned a podcast called Fear the Boot, but at the time it was only with respect to their interview with Matt Vancil. I'm going to bring them up again because since that mentioning, I've really become a fan of the show as a whole. I should mention again that Rucht actually told me about this podcast a while back and correctly guessed I'd enjoy it, but to this point I hadn't given it much of a try. As someone who likes to listen to amusing group commentaries on independent projects (often listening to the commentaries on the first Gamers movie as well as those for Red vs Blue) and someone who loves talking about gaming in general, this thing was indeed "right up my alley", so to speak.
Now, when I get hooked on something, I tend to go all the way - so a few weeks ago I manually downloaded all of their stuff (at the time, 8.2 days worth). Generally, when I'm doing whatever (work, mowing, driving, working on my own projects or just playing on my computer) I tend to listen to music, movies and/or (especially) commentaries as a fairly constant backdrop... ...so for the last few weeks, I've been listening to the guys at Fear the Boot. It has been quite enjoyable to my taste - and I've made it through almost 3/4 of the show's history.


Anyway, looking back...

On Monday I started my World of Darkness game, and I thought the first session went very well (as always, there's a synopsis on the gaming page). We had 4 players and a 5th is planning to come next time, so we've got a pretty full table. I'm pretty excited about this game (and the current WoD system in general). I have some interesting ideas for where this campaign might go so I hope it sticks together.
This game was started in the interest of doing something a bit more regularly than our Mouse Guard game, which has some pretty severe scheduling limitations. Still, I in no way want to abandon Mouse Guard since that game is pretty awesome too...just...sparse.

Our friend Nick is finally back from Saudi and he introduced us to a new game called Citadels last weekend. It's a pretty cool, simple & relatively quick little card game. He also has Dominion, which I've been wanting to try, but we didn't get to it last weekend.

Edit: Played Dominion tonight (May 1st). *Great* game. We'll probably pick it up at some point.

Way back on the 10th I got to playtest an RPG I previously mentioned having thought up and written in about a week. This game is called Bot. There's a (very) brief mechanics-less description of the concept and a synopsis of the session on the Gaming page. I thought it went very well, everyone seemed to catch on quickly and have fun and I was very happy with it.

Way, way back on the 7th our GitP friends Stacy & Tracy stopped in on us JC folk, wherein we played some games and ambushed Llama with nerf guns (this is becoming something of a tradition). It's been a while, so I don't remember what all we did, but we I know had a good time.


In terms of the less interesting, we've come upon the lawn mowing time of year again, and I've been doing a bit of that. I actually enjoy the exercise, but it just takes so long to do. We've been talking about getting a rider for some time...maybe sometime this year.


~PS

We lost our company this morning, and that was sad. Ginger, William and Liam left around 9:30 or so. They'd been hanging out with us for about the last week. We had a great time.

They arrived here last Saturday evening. On Sunday we went to the coffeehouse at WAPC and chatted with some of the native Wataugians who wanted to catch up with Ginger since she'd been gone. On Monday we had a game night at the Hippie Hut Mk. II, complete with 3 munchkins. Cash & Guns was entertaining. Thursday Patrick ran his Star Wars game and Ginger's old character got to return for a cameo appearance in it, along with William's "Bill Redshirt". Last night we met up at Mid City for dinner and came back here for a very enjoyable game night featuring Time's Up. Much fun was had. Samara came out to join us - which was cool since it had been a few years since we'd had her around - and Rucht brought Duane who was in town and is always a lot of fun to hang out with too.

So this last week was lots of fun and games. We now return to our regular existence. I have posted some pictures on the book-face.


Well, the first mowing of the front yard for the season has occurred. It was like a small forest in places. While doing that, I was listening to and enjoying an interview with Matt Vancil (writer/director of The Gamers movies) from Fear the Boot.com, which Rucht sent to me - and now I'm passing on to anyone here who might like it. I was actually sad that the Gamers II dvd didn't include any commentaries (they ran out of room on the disc), so it was cool to get to hear Matt talk some about it. Also, he and the guys that do Fear the Boot have philosophies on gaming/roleplaying very similar to mine, and I enjoyed their articulation of some of those ideas.

Working backward toward the last blog, we had a game night over at our friend Casey's place a few weeks ago wherein we got to play another great Days of Wonder game called Small World. Tim was in town for that, and it's always good to get to hang out with him. Also, we had another awesome Mouse Guard session (which has been posted on Gaming page) on the 19th. We left off in the middle of some action & hopefully we'll get to continue that one soon.

In slightly related news, I recently spent about a week designing a new table-top rpg. It's considerably different than any other rpg I've ever played. I think it will be a lot of fun. I'll probably post some stuff about it on the Gaming page at some point, but I don't want to talk about it in any specifics yet. I intend to "spring it" on a group of players as a one-shot without any prior disclosure or explanation - I think that approach will suit this game and its setting quite well. I'll probably be trying to put that together soon.

In other gaming news, my World of Darkness game has enough foundation to get it started whenever we choose to bring it up, so I've shelved it until I have an opportunity to work it in - which may be a while. Still very interested in it though.


Now that the weather has been warming up, I've been thinking a bit more about photography again - pulling out my camera more often and looking at the lenses I wanna pick up at some point. I'll probably end up buying the really expensive one next - but that might not be for some time. I had a great time taking a *lot* of pictures of Liam this week - most of that album may be him, with other people thrown in.


Work is going alright. Business is quite good, all things considered. I'm still/again working on some systems for the next version of our model. It also looks like we're going up to OH for a "business trip" later this month. Yay rah. It'll be good to see Kedrick, Addie, little Jack and my other coworkers, but other aspects of the trip are much, much less exciting. Oh well.


~PS

I'm not sure if I'm back in the swing of things or not. I was actually kinda looking forward to work after being gone last week, but so far I don't have any fun projects. :\

Sheri's mom's surgery went as well as could be expected, I think. It wasn't nearly as bad as last time. When we left AR, she was still in some pain, but seemed to be recovering pretty well.

The week was largely uneventful. I spent a lot of time writing gaming notes for World of Darkness and playing on the lappy while they watched TV. I posted some more detailed info on my plans for this game on the gaming page.

We did play some games we brought (Settlers, Pillars of the Earth, Ticket to Ride), particularly with Ben & Brie when they were there on saturday, and we did enjoy simply spending time with her family.

I also took about 300 pictures of random stuff outside around their property, which was fun - it had been quite a while since i'd had the opportunity to got shooting. A couple are pretty good. I may post 'em somewhere.


Not much on the calendar for the next couple weeks as of now. Ginger, William and Liam are planning to come and visit on the 27th and are going to hang out with us for about a week. That will be lots of fun. Apart from that, there's the thursday evening gaming group I'm playing in... ...and that's pretty much it.


~PS

We had a wonderfully great time with Thes this last weekend. We got to spend the last few days hanging out, playing lots of games, occasionally engaging in large-scale nerf warfare and generally being our goofy selves. Thes really seemed to like my Mouse Guard game, and I finally got to play Agricola!

I have realized I didn't take any pictures of the festivities. Use your imagination: it basically looked like some previous meetup pics, only with fewer people. Just as much fun, though. :)

Sheri and I were very sad that she had to leave before we got up though... ...apparently Thes didn't want to wake us. We really wish she had... Alas...


So...not much is up now. I'm just hanging out, checking some facebook, writing a session-synopsis for the Mouse Guard game, watching Star Wars and contemplating some World of Darkness.

I'm also passively looking at some cell phone plan info. There has been a slight altercation relating to my work phone & personal use (which had never been a problem before). I think it amounts to a little bit of a misunderstanding and/or lack of communication. I figure it will probably be ironed out shortly, but we've been talking about maybe getting our own phone for a while anyway (for a variety of reasons)... ...and I do like the shiny iPhones...heh.


~PS

...for posterity, I guess.

Sheri & I went to see Milligan's production of the 'Little Women' musical on friday. It was amazingly good. There are some seriously talented people in the Milligan Theatre dept... ...and the musicians did a fantastic job also. We had a good time.

On saturday, we hung out with Llama & helped him take a rental car back. He's still looking for a new steed.

Our friend Steve moved *back* to SC this week, and this made us sad. He'd only been back into the area for a few months. It just turned out that he wasn't able to help with the music at his church back in SC as well as he wanted from here, and he was only seeing his daughter every couple of weeks anyway. He just decided it made more sense to be there for now. Hopefully we'll get to see him occasionally.


My gaming hobby has been dominating my 'hobby time' lately. It's too cold to be out taking pictures and, while i've been playing my acoustic a bit lately, I haven't come up with anything original. Mostly just playing some covers I'm fond of.

I picked up a couple of new gaming books over the weekend: Mr. K's had some copies of White-Wolf's current World of Darkness core rules & Mage: The Awakening books. I probably wouldn't have bought 'em new, but half-price for current editions was irresistible. Since I picked those up on friday, I have gone through them both with a broad-toothed comb - which is to say, I read both books, but I skipped things that a) were redundant b) i already knew or c) didn't seem necessary to know completely in total (such as the 150+ pages of spells in Mage).
I remembered really liking Robb's Werewolf games at RuchtCon & Thanksgaming and I've found I really like the current rules set for WoD. Exalted (another WW game) is fun and the concept/setting is cool, but the system is (in my opinion) somewhat muddled and over-complicated. WoD seems to keep things (relatively) simple. I'm also drawn to the fact that it's *different* from our normal games (both in concepts & mechanics), and I've been all about some change for about the last year. I'll probably be looking to start a WoD campaign in the not-too-distant future. I've already got some ideas.


Some things I've mentioned before, more imminently:

With respect to other gaming, Rucht is planning to start his Rogue Trader game tomorrow night, and I'm scheduled to run both of my current games this weekend (after a month interim). I'm also *still* looking to get ahold of a few indie game books I've mentioned previously, but haven't had a chance to yet.

Also, we (our local circle of friends) have a friend visiting from out of town this weekend. Thes is coming in later tomorrow night to hang out with us until monday morning. That should be a fun time. :)


~PS

It's been a rather busy week. Unusually so, actually.

It was good to see Nick again on saturday, and to meet Jen. She seems pretty cool. Unfortunately, they weren't able to stay as long as originally planned and we only got to hang out for a little while.

Sunday Sheri & I went to Grandview for church. That was cool. We saw quite a few people that we knew (but hadn't seen in quite a while) and I was reminded how much I really like to hear Aaron Wymer speak.

Sunday was valentine's day, but Sheri and I don't usually do much *on* that day. Instead, we wait until the 19th - which happens to be today - to 'celebrate', since it was on the 19th ten years ago that she and I started dating. Happy Valentinanniversary to us. Or something. :-D

Monday we got to see Jerry & Amanda and little Jared as they stopped through at the Hippies' on their way home from a trip to FL. It's always cool to hang out with them, and their munchkin is exceptionally cute. I didn't have my camera with me, but I should have...

Tuesday was significant this week only in that it was the only evening I *didn't* have something going on.

Wednesday Rucht had a group of us over to watch Aliens. Prior to that time, I hadn't seen any of the Alien movies (and I still haven't seen any others). This was seen as somewhat of a problem that needed to be remedied. I enjoyed the movie and it's always cool to get together with friends.

Thursday (yesterday) was Patrick's Star Wars game. This game has been very enjoyable for me. It may be the first time I've actually had a character's personality, motives, actions, etc evolve *in game*. At Patrick's prompting, I've written up a bunch of stuff (probably more than he really wanted) for/about him with respect to his development in the story.

Tonight Sheri and I are going out to dinner and then over to see Milligan's production of Little Women - maybe not in that order...

Work has been kind of crazy lately as we're *still* trying to tie up some stuff before the end of the day... ...unfortunately, I'm currently waiting for a crucial piece of info to plug in - without which, I can't do much.

Looking ahead:

Next weekend our friend Thes is coming in for a visit and I'm supposed to run a couple of gaming sessions (after a month-long interim). That should be fun.

Also along the gaming line, Rucht is starting a Rogue Trader game next week that I'm gonna be in. I'm looking forward to this as I haven't got to play in one of Rucht's games before.

A couple weeks after that, Sheri and I are heading to AR to help her mom out after her upcoming surgery.

~PS

I think we're getting more than our fair share of snow this year. Or, more than we've ended up with the last 10 years or so anyway.

Usually I talk about my friends, my hobbies and stuff that's been happening on this thing. Not too much fits that bill lately.

Aside from picking up the acoustic from time to time (occasionally with friends), I haven't done much with 'music' lately. I have a recording or two that I could post, but I'm really not completely happy with them. In fact, I've become increasingly critical of my writing & composition. I think when I finally do get some stuff that I like recorded, it will probably be a bit different from past projects. Who knows.

I've wanted to take some pictures lately too, but I think I've photographed everything in my general vicinity and I haven't been anywhere new... ...and I haven't been particularly inspired by any 'new angles' on things available.

We've had some more scheduling conflicts with our gaming. These aren't all bad, but I'm still trying to figure out when we can play again.

We have done a little hanging out with a few friends lately. Robb & I got together to play some guitar last week and then went out for pizza (and sandwiches) and the hideously-colored Generous George's.

I've also been hanging out with Steve a bit lately, helping him record some of his songs. I've also recently dug out my Magic cards and he & I have played a few games of that. That's been fun, though I haven't been able to convince Sheri to learn it yet. I've always enjoyed that game, but most of the people I know stopped playing it quite a while back. Others I know have moved on to only playing it on the 360, but, like Carcassonne, I'd prefer to play the actual, physical game - and then there's the fact that I don't own a 360...


In other news, as she mentioned on her blog, Sheri has resigned as choir director for our church - mostly because the choir was pretty much dissolving anyway. This puts us somewhat in 'limbo' with regard to what we'll do next. It feels kind of awkward in Erwin, and we've talked about visiting some other places closer to where we live. Nothing's actually be decided though.

As she *hasn't* mentioned on her blog (as yet), Sheri's also been doing some writing. She's about 60 pages into a story, and I think she's doing a great job with it - which is why I mention it.


Work is work and, aside from a few frustrations, has been pretty good. The last month or so has been a continual swing from really busy to really slow and back again. Not too much going on at the moment, so I'm just looking over some stuff. I know some other things will be on their way to me soon, though.


~PS

Well, here we are at February.

Yes, I know that's redundant, seeing as there's a date right above the statement, but that's what's going through my head atm.

First off, Penguinsushi.com is another year older - bringing me up to 5 glorious(?) years on the web!

Second, RPM 2010 starts today, but sadly, I don't think I'll be participating this year for two reasons: 1) I haven't been able to come up with any new material in the last couple of months - though to be honest, I've only put in about 15 hours worth of effort in that time - and 2) because, due to some extenuating circumstances, I'll be losing a large portion of my studio gear next weekend. This will be replaced, of course, but it may not be immediately.

In other news:

Sheri & I went to see Avatar with Robb & Edie last night night. It was quite a good movie, if a bit predictable. My assessment is that it is basically 60% Ferngully, 25% The Matrix, and 15% other (possibly LoTR; others have suggested Pocahontas, Dances with Wolves and Aliens). That's not to say it was completely derivative - it did have its originality - but large parts of it definitely conjured thoughts of "I've seen this somewhere before...". Still, like I said, a good movie.

Llama and I played a fair bit of Super Mario Wii this weekend and, with an obsessive-collecting "No Big Coin Left Behind" philosophy, actually finished and beat the game seeking and obtaining every big coin in every level of the primary 8 worlds (including going back to hunt ones we'd missed in other worlds previously). Yes, we are the awesome. We've now started on the "secret" post-game World 9, which, I have to say, is pretty tough.

We started a new D&D game on friday night and I'm proud that not even the snow storm could prevent it - though driving Steve home was...entertaining...and 2/3 of our guests actually camped out here that night.
As I mentioned before, I had carefully mapped out the game's scenario from most-if-not-all angles and then gave the "party" and obvious hook for them to take - a hook which would lead them to the ruin of a prison outpost where a demon was reportedly hiding. Obvious adventure, right? Given the attitudes originally fostered at the conception of this game, I thought they'd want the obvious hook. Silly me. The first 3/4 of the session was spent around town investigating some other goings on. By the time they actually made it to the keep, it was so late that we had to call it a night after the first encounter - which was actually still outside it's gates.
So here we have a question of causality: *Because* I overcomplicated the game, writing in the multiple goings-on from different angles, I knew exactly what to do and what they would find when they went off the "expected course". HOWEVER, if I *hadn't* written up all those other angles (i.e., if I'd just said "you're in a tavern. you see a wanted poster for a demon. it's in this keep. go for it."), they wouldn't have had *reason* to go off the "expected course" (though that iteration of the setting would have seemed much less realistic and "alive"...to me anyway). So basically, my excessive detail was both the cause of my "problems" *and* my salvation there-from. Still, I wouldn't change much if i could. It was a good time.
The real beauty is, because the party did something that I didn't expect, I realized that the story was going to have to change. At least one thing they did was going to have a significant impact and make drastic alterations to how the narrative would have unfolded otherwise - and that's the way it should be. The characters' actions should have real meaning in the story, beyond the simple "either you succeeded or you failed". Being able to account for that as a GM is a bit of an art, and one that don't always feel I'm doing well. This time though, it's working beautifully.

~PS

Well, there hasn't been much to make the blog lately.

Work has been a bit subdued lately - which is good, because I think they're getting ready to give me a bunch of stuff, so I've been enjoying the respite the last week or so has afforded.

Most of my free time has been spent either A) playing some Wii games, or B) working on some roleplaying games.


Mini Ninjas was (and continues to be) *lots* of fun. If you take a rather relaxed pace, the game is about 12 hours long. I beat it in about 13. I've played it about 14, now looking for some of the remaining statues (there are a certain number in each level). The game has a lot of replay value - not so much in terms of story, but simply because it's just plain fun to play and allows you to go back and replay levels you've already completed at any time.

My Life As a Darklord has been very entertaining as well, though it's getting pretty tough. I replayed the same level 4 times yesterday trying (unsuccessfully) to keep out those pesky adventurers before giving up for the night.


I'm currently gearing up to start a new D&D game for a few friends on Friday. It's been almost a year since I've run one. This is intended to be less a "campaign" and more of a "mini-series". I set out to make some simpler, smaller, episodic adventures for us to enjoy... ...the problem is, the more you try to understand and explain, the less possible "simple" becomes. Some would say that when you have a 2.5 page outline of stuff that happened before the PC's arrive on scene, you've passed that which can be reasonably called "simple".
The premise itself felt reasonably simple when i started, but in detailing the situation fully enough that it could become a living entity (i.e., a situation that could alter and react to the PC's actions), it was found to contain several facets that needed to be addressed for it to really work. "Simple" might not be the best word for it. Still, it's scale fits the general feel I'm going for and I *do* think it will be a lot of fun to play.

The resumption of Mouse Guard was exciting and went really well - I'm really looking forward to continuing that one too.

We've also resumed Patrick's Star Wars game, and I've been trying to do a little work on my character's backstory & pursuits for that... ...but I don't really know as much about the Star Wars universe as the rest of everyone... ...I know the original trilogy very well and anything Lego Star Wars may have taught me, but not much beyond that...

Still kicking around some ideas pertaining to my pet system project, but not really anything else to say about that.


~PS

"...we had to walk a mile up hill in the snow to play an rpg..."

I think this deserves and honorable mention on my blog.

Last thursday was slated as a date for Patrick's Star Wars game. Since Sheri was going to need the jeep that evening, Doug (one of the other players) came to pick me up.

Somewhere between my house & Patrick's (approx. 40min trip), it began to snow very hard. By the time we were exiting in Kingsport, the roads were slippery, and we actually slid through the intersection at the interchange and a red light down the street (when we came to a stop in the middle of the intersection). Doug had said he had wanted to stop at a Hardees near Patrick's place to get some dinner, but wasn't sure he wanted to make another stop in this weather.

Around this point, Patrick called us to see how we were doing, how the weather was, and to tell us that Tony had parked down at the Hardees and was walking up to his place since he didn't want to take the roads in his car.

By the time we got to Patrick's neighborhood, there was a nice coating of snow on all the roads, and one of the hills proved to be impassible - meaning when we got halfway up, Doug's little quasi-suv ceased moving forward. I call Doug's vehicle a 'quasi-suv' because, while it does have traction-control, it, unfortunately, does *not* have any kind of 4wd.

Now, I say the q-suv 'ceased moving forward', which was true - but what I didn't mention about that just now was that, after it did so, it immediately began sliding backward. It finally came to a stop about 20ft back down the hill in front of a driveway, which we slid back into, turned around, and did a (mostly) controlled slide back down the hill whereupon we decided we'd take a cue from Llama's strategy. We headed back down to the Hardees, got dinner as originally planned, and started walking toward Patrick's.

When we made it as far as the big hill - this time on foot - as the snow poured down on top of us, I turned to Doug, and, with a wry smile, that was what I said.

~PS

Still trying to get back into the normal swing of things after a couple of relaxing weeks.

We had a great time over new year's with a bunch of awesome friends. We basically spent the long weekend hanging out and playing lots of games - including a midnight game of New Year's Kubb. Robb & Edie were awesome hosts in their spacious new house, and it was great to get to see Jerry, Amanda and Stacey again. Plus Llama and Tim were there, which always makes for entertainment. :) I've got some pics of the festivities up on facebook.

I've finished compiling most of my favorite photos from 2009 (and the ones that I think are "good" from a technical perspective), and have created a home for them on my Gallery page.

On a more musical note (ha!), I'm still not sure whether I'm going to make another attempt at completing RPM this year. I really *want* to, as I've been upgrading some hardware & software in my "studio", have been helping Steve record some tracks, have been streamlining my approach to the recording process and have learned quite a bit regarding the enhancement of the quality of the tracks I put down... ...unfortunately, when it comes to actual material to record, I am all but completely dry atm. I've been trying to come up with some stuff for the last week or so (albeit, pretty sporadically), but haven't had any luck. If I can come up with a few likely tracks before Feb 1, I'll probably give it a go... ...otherwise, I may sit out this year.

In other news, I'm trying to work out some scheduling get my gaming group(s) back together after the chaos the holidays generally bring regarding this hobby. I've been working on my Mouse Guard campaign, which I'm excited about. I'm intending to pick up a few other games reasonably soon as well and I'm hoping to run and/or play with some greater-than-usual variety this year.


~PS

The holidays are fast approaching, but this year hasn't become as hectic (yet) as years past.

We have our vacation time planned out now - we'll be gone to the IN/OH area from the afternoon of the 20th through the 28th. We'll get to go to christmas parties on both sides of my extended family this year, which will be cool. Still need to finalize some details - like when to meet up with some people and who might be able to take care of Ally.

Other stuff (in no real order):

The Social Theory class I had been sitting in on came to a close, which is kinda sad. I was enjoying that. Dr. Beck took us out for lunch on Dec 1st - this was a reward for the class's good grades and they invited me to come along for fun. I brought them cookies on the last day of class. They were a little abnormal in terms of shape & consistency, but tasty.

Our friend Steve has moved back into the area, and it's been fun trying to catch up with him a bit. We've been talking a bit about music & recording and he wants to get back into a little tabletop gaming too. I've set part of my recording 'studio' up and have been playing a bit with Addictive Drums and AmpliTube. I've been looking at electronic drum kits again too.

We're planning what should be a fun new-years-eve party at the Hippie Hut Mk. II, though we are very sad that our EP & co. will not be able to make it. :(

Yesterday was Sheri's birthday. We went to the crazy tomato and then to best buy to buy a movie. We ended up getting Evangelion:1.01 - the first of 4 feature-length movies which are to be a retelling of the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime series. It was pretty faithful to the original. On the downside, I doubt the next one will come out before next christmas.
Also, for one of her birthday presents, I got her Super Mario Wii, which she was very excited about. :) We played a couple levels of that too - it's hugely entertaining.

Still haven't got to playtest my new roleplaying system, but hopefully soon.

~PS

Since my project for work is starting to hurt my brain, I'm opting to take a short break to talk about our awesome weekend.

Thanksgaming was our second mini-gaming-convention hosted by our friend Rucht. As with RuchtCon, the general idea was this: invite all your gaming friends over (both local & out-of-towners), everyone votes on what to play, the chosen games are assigned to gaming 'slots', and people sign up for what they want to play.

This mini-con began at 8pm on friday the 6th with Pathfinder and 3:16.

Pathfinder is basically D&D 3.75. It's a little different from 3.5ed, but it's not 4e. My understanding is that it was basically devised by some people who weren't too fond of 4e and decided they'd rather continue 3.5 with a few changes. It was quite a fun game. It's been a long time since I've had a chance to *play* D&D, and I got to play dwarven cleric (a race/class combo I'm particularly fond of). The game does show a bit of inherent power creep over standard 3.5 (which can be viewed by cynics as a bit of a shameless attempt to get players to like it), but many of the rule changes do help the game in a more objective way. Personally, I'm still satisfied with 3.5, but this game was also fun and played very similarly. I do like the flavor of Pathfinder, which tends to expand D&D conventions.

As an aside, I discovered I really like the way Rucht does minis - which is much more like battletech: he doesn't use a grid, he just sets up the scene on the table, and then uses a tape measure to determine distances. This way, you don't have to worry about "diagonals" and other unnatural-feeling grid phenomena.

While we were playing Pathfinder, the other group was playing 3:16, which is, from what I understand, a simple space shoot-em-up rpg. Each player only has two stats: Fighting and Non-Fighting. Everyone who played it said it was lots of fun. I'd like to try it sometime. I like simple games.

The con resumed at noon on Saturday. This is when I ran my Mouse Guard session. That was lots of fun. The scenario I'd made was to take them into the Darkheather before the war of 1149 to destroy a weasel weapon. They were so into their characters, the world and roleplaying interactions that they barely even made it *to* the Darkheather, let alone found the 'weapon' they were sent to destroy. Despite the fact that they only had one conflict (a journey/storm conflict) and didn't even get to fight a single weasel, they all had a great time with the game and I had a great time running it.

The other noon session was for Zombie Apocalypse. This was actually one of a few zombie-based games that were played (others between sessions). I'm much less a fan of zombies than many of those present. I don't really know much about this one, unfortunately.

Saturday evening's games were Cartoon Action Hour and Spirit of the Century.

Spirit of the Century was *great* and Matt did a great job running it. I want this game. It's very simple, heavy on roleplaying, and exceptionally fun to play. It is basically a steampunk/pulp game which emphasizes overly-archetypal characters and over-the-top stunts, actions and dialogue. We all had a blast.

Doug's Cartoon Action Hour was a game based on 80's action cartoon characters ala He-man. Players were essentially playing through such an episode, complete with all the mayhem, crazy antics and amazing cheese.

On Sunday I was supposed to run a session of the system I've been working on for the last year or so. Unfortunately, half of my group had to leave Sunday morning, so we ended up joining Robb's Werewolf game. As it turns out, it was just as well. I'd been re-engineering large parts of the setting for the last week and wasn't entirely sure I was ready to present it. I'm kind of glad I have some more time. I'm close though.

Robb's Werewolf game was a lot of fun but, like RuchtCon's session, we didn't get very far into the story (for a variety of reasons). I keep telling him he should run an ongoing game so we'd actually get to play through it.


The weekend was a lot of fun. It was awesome to get to hang out with so many cool people and play so many fun games. I'm already looking forward to next time... ...which is hopefully reasonably soon...


~PS

...or something.

It's been a while since a blog has happened. Only a few things to report from the interim.

Got to talk about Wallerstein in Dr. Beck's social theory class. That was fun. I think I might have been a little too long-winded though.

Helped the Hippies move into their new house. It's a lot bigger and nicer than the other place they were renting (which was much too small for them). We're all really excited for them. They're still in the process of finishing that move & getting settled, but I think they're most of the way there.

Sheri had a Chorale concert last saturday night, before which we went out to dinner with Patrick & Stacy. It was a fun time - got to hang out with some friends and hear the choir sing.

Been working really hard on stuff for Thanksgaming. I think/hope my stuff will be ready by then. I think it will, but I still have a lot to do.

~PS

Every once in a while, I see something in spam that makes me laugh. I just received this little gem:



This makes no sense on several levels, not the least of which is that it's basically claiming to be from *me*.

The link, of course, while claiming to point to a non-existent folder on my server, in fact points to another server entirely where they had hoped to lure me for some reason.


EDIT: This just in: spam for russian hunting videos (*in* russian) is a new one on me...



In other news...

Not too much has gone on the last couple of weeks. Our friends have mostly been busy lately, so we haven't done much that's particularly interesting or fun. We *have* played a fair bit of Lego Star Wars.

My mom did come through on her way to see my sister in Columbia, SC. She stopped over tuesday night and again on her way back on saturday. We got to go play a little golf and had a good time talking. We also went to Five Guys for the first time (it just opened up here in JC), and have decided (like several of our friends) that they are probably the best burger place ever.

My photo show at WAPC came down on thursday (also, i've been playing with my new 50mm prime a lot), almost bought a riding mower on saturday (still waiting to see if they get back with us), Thanksgaming (RuchtCon II) is coming up soon (and I've got a fair amount of work to do for it) and I've been comparing wide-angle lenses on my photography wish list.


~PS

Ah, yes. A holiday. This basically means I slept in (more). We haven't done a whole lot today. We did take Ally to walk around Sycamore Shoals - and she actually voluntarily jumped into the river!! So...maybe it's not the water that makes her dislike baths? It was quite hilarious...

Anyway...


I feel like I've been busy lately, but my calendar seems to disagree.


I've been trying to read some sociology lately. Dr. Beck, one of my favorite professors from Milligan, told me earlier in the summer when we were chatting at a Milligan picnic that if I ever wanted to sit in on any of her classes, I'd be welcome to. I responded by warning her that if she offered such an invitation, I would, in fact, show up. So ever since the semester started a couple weeks ago, I've been trying to make it to her Social Theory class on my lunch break on tuesdays and thursdays. I bring my laptop along and sit in on the discussions whilst going about my normal work - this is one of the great things about having a job like mine: I can pretty much work from anywhere I can get a 'net connection.

It has been very interesting. I've found that I miss having to think critically to understand things. While my job is very stimulating and requires a lot of creative thinking, it's far less taxing than reading Durkheim.


I got a call a while back from Sue Shanks at WAPC who asked me if I'd put up some of my pictures in Watauga's Gallery / Coffeehouse (Just Coffee) for about a month. I told her that sounded like fun, and since then I've gone through and selected about 25 of my pictures to get prints of and then mount in some mats and frames (where available/affordable). I've been getting the pictures printed as 8x10's, which necessitates some cropping since the aspect ratio of my camera's frame isn't the same as 8x10. For this and other reasons, I think some of my pictures look better on my computer screen than in the frames, but many of them look wonderful and I'm excited to have some hard copies and to get to share them. I've been working on getting them set up and thinking up interesting names for them (I like naming things). After the show, I'll probably end up giving quite a few of them away to people that want them.

The "show" officially "opens" this Friday, September 11th around 8pm 7pm at Watauga Avenue Presbyterian Church in the gallery downstairs. I'll be hanging out there most of evening. If you're reading this, you should come hang out with me, play some games, listen to some music (no salsa, I promise) and look at some pictures.


I've been playing my electric guitar quite a bit, but haven't done much with the band in the last couple of weeks.


On the gaming front, We had a very enjoyable second Mouse Guard session last night. As I've mentioned before, I'm finding that I'm needing to tweak a few rules to my liking, but overall I love the game immensely.

I've also been enjoying Patrick's Star Wars game quite a bit - last time, we found ourselves sucked into a Bonanza episode, and actually, it was quite awesome.

I've made a little more progress on my developing rp system, but I tend to go back-and-forth on a lot of things.


Sheri and I are making plans to head to AR for Ben's wedding in a couple of weeks and then, after that, we have tickets to go see the Decemberists in Asheville on the 25th!!!


~PS

Not too much going on, just a few things to put down.

Had a great time at the Hippie Hut yesterday. We had a cookout with quite a few friends, played a couple of fun games (Red Dragon Inn and the always-favorite Apples to Apples) and generally had a good time hanging out. Sheri and I have discovered that we officially don't count as "company" anymore - meaning when we arrived early, we got to help clean up a little for later arrivals. Heh. We were glad to help.

Trying to work on some game and story content for a few different projects. Not sure how well it's going, but it's going. What I'm trying to do with some of it is a little different than anything i've tried before (I may elaborate on that later). In related news, I'm also looking forward to continuing our Mouse Guard game, whenever we can.

Of the fifty-something online matches i've now played on QuakeLive, I have 2 wins. That sounds pretty bad, but I'm actually a little proud of it. I've only played free-for-all, and it's really hard to come in 1st of everyone in the arena. Most of the time, I'm somewhere squarely in the middle, and usually 20ish points behind the leader.

~PS

You know, if i remembered to do this more often, I wouldn't have to cover eight things in one post... ...though I might have fewer nonsense titles, and I would miss that...

Anyway...

It seems i've been pretty busy over the last couple of weeks - though not with anything particularly important, mind you.

The band we're starting seems to be taking off nicely. We had our third practice last tuesday, and I thought it went pretty well. We're having a good time. Mahto actually joined us for that one. It was fun to have him around, but I think the sound got a little muddy with three guitars. I'm not entirely sure if it was just volume/eq or if we need to have a clearer conception of our respective guitar "parts" or possibly a combination of both. Anyway, I think our next practice is tentatively scheduled for wednesday, and I'm looking forward to some more jamming.

We *finally* got to start our Mouse Guard campaign friday evening, which I'm very excited about. It was a fun is slightly shorter session. I still feel a little awkward with the system as, unlike the d&d i've been playing/running for nine years, I don't always remember all the basic mechanics off the top of my head. I'm sure that will smooth out as we go though. I'm looking forward to continuing this game, and I hope we can get to be somewhat regular as I think that would help us as we learn the system.

I got to play golf for the second time this year yesterday. Our church helps sponsor the East TN Children's Home benefit tournament at the Elizabethton Golf Course each year, and so two of us get to go play in it. They asked me if I'd like to play and, after telling them I wasn't sure they wanted someone as lousy as me representing them (heh), I said I'd love to. Tracy Moore and I did pretty well, finishing up at +1. Of course, that was pretty much all him, but I will take credit for a few shots, most of which were chips and putts but they ended up saving us some pars and birdies. It was a good time, though it was pretty hot and I did get a nice sunburn.


A vague look ahead...

Well, my calendar looks kind of empty for the short run as of this moment, but it'll probably end up filling in too fast. Next month we'll be taking some time to go out to AR for Ben's (sheri's brother) wedding, causing us to miss yet another Talk Like A Pirate party. There's also a Decemberists concert the next week that I might be trying to go to, another small GitP gathering (with munchkins!) that I'd like to attend (though it kinda looks unlikely :() in october and then, further out at the beginning of november, we'll be enjoying having Thanksgaming - which will be another mini-gaming-convention much like RuchtCon for some of our gamer friends. I'm hoping run Mouse Guard (because everyone should get to try that game) and/or my homebrew system (because I think it will be fun and I'd like to see how it flows... ...but I haven't heard much interest in it as yet :\) for this. If I do get to run something, I'm glad I have a few months to prepare this time.


~PS

As some have commented, not too many knew we ever left. Probably because it was the sort of trip that was difficult to be real "excited" (and therefore talk much) about.

Last friday Sheri and I headed up to IN. The main reason for the trip was to go to the memorial service for her grandmother, who passed away back in april. As you might expect, it was a nice, if somewhat sad, time.

We spent some time with some of sheri's dad's family - for the first time, really. Stanley and Bonnie were hosting us as well as sheri's parents for the weekend. They were really nice and fun to chat with and we ended up talking with them for quite a while after her parents left on monday.

We also got to meet Ben's fiance. She seems nice, if quite shy. It was kind of a shame we didn't get more of a chance to hang out.

We also stopped in on my parents for about a day, which was great. We played some games and talked and generally had a good time.

While we were there, a rather significant storm system came through tuesday morning that resulted in flooding, power loss and downed trees. the downed trees resulted in a bit of a wet adventure as we tried to make it back to their house from lunch.

And, as I try to do each time I go to IN, I had Noble Roman's pizza and breadsticks. Tasty.

I put a few pictures from the trip up in the Gallery - mostly pictures of scenery and small children.


On some other stuff:

About a week ago we had the 3rd session for Little Fears (session synopsis on the gaming page soon). It went so-so. It was a little slow and certain elements didn't manifest quite the way I'd hoped, but it was alright. Hopefully next session will be a little more satisfying.

Last thursday we (me, robb, josh & bill) had our second band practice. Improvement from the previous session was 100%, not that that first practice wasn't great. That was the most fun I've had playing guitar in 5 years or more. :) Right now we're just doing cover songs, but we've talked briefly about maybe trying to write some stuff. We've also talked about possibly playing some small local shows once we get good and solid. We're planning to get together tomorrow for more fun. On a related note, I should be getting an eq to run my amp through soon.

~PS

I've had a few things going on the last couple of weeks, but not much worthy of recording or reporting.


About a week ago we took the Gamers II movie over to Rucht & McKenna's house so they could see it, and Tony joined us as well. It was a good time. I think McKenna was laughing so hard she was crying. (aside: If you're a roleplayer, you should really see the Dead Gentlemen's movies 'The Gamers' and 'The Gamers II: Dorkness Rising'.)


Last saturday we went over to Robb & Edie's to hang out for a while. Robb, Josh and I hung out on the porch playing guitar while Robb was starting one of his brewing projects. At some point we got to talking about going to Josh's house to play with his dad, Bill, who is a drummer, so on sunday we met up at Bill's place and jammed hard for a few hours. That was a lot of fun. I've played with Robb a bit and with Josh once and we'd never played with Bill. For our first time getting together, we sounded great. I really don't think it will take much work for us to sound quite good. *With* a lot of work, I think we could sound pretty awesome. We're trying to make plans to get together again soon.


I've been working on my Mouse Guard campaign quite a bit. We finally got to get together to make characters last night. We didn't have time to really get started on the game itself, but we had fun and I think the players have come up with some really cool ideas. I really like how character creation works in this system. Hopefully we'll get to actually start the game soon, but, unfortunately, it probably won't be for a couple of weeks.


In other news, we *still* need to get out and ride our bikes. It seems like something always comes up whenever we think we might try to go out.


~PS

Well, we finally got the jeep to the mechanics on wednesday for a replacement fuel pump. So far it seems to be behaving - but, even though i was 99% convinced this was the problem, it'll take a week or so with no problems before i'm convinced.


About the only other things to report are gaming-related.

I finally got to run Mouse Guard! Granted it was just an intro session using one of the sample missions (though i did add a bit to it) and characters, but still, i'm just glad we finally got to play.

This game is going to be a lot of fun. I *love* the setting and 99% of the mechanics, though I did house-rule something out from the start: I don't like the "turns" system. It seems too arbitrary, railroaded and limiting. Basically, the way it reads, is that the GM gets a "turn" where the players deal with all the stuff he/she has planned. Then the players get a "turn" where they can do certain things. There are certain things that the players can't do during the GM's turn (no matter how much sense it would make for them to do it then), and vice-versa. I also don't like the "checks" system that goes with this - where the players spend "checks" that they've accumulated during the GM's "turn" to do things on their "turn": if you don't have a checks, you can't initiate things. It could be that i'm misreading it, or maybe it's not meant to be as set in stone as it seems to be presented, but I just don't like how these aspects read so i'm not using them.

In the game's defense on this matter, my thought is that this game isn't actually written for roleplayers - it seems to be written assuming the players have never played a tabletop rpg before. I think it's just trying to give very clear and definite guidelines so that both the players and the GM know what to do when in a more concrete way - via the "turns" - as opposed to a more abstract flow where the characters can do things "when it makes sense" or "when they have downtime" or in other, more narrative but less definitive conditions.

Aside from this relatively minor game-flow-based complaint (which was pretty easy to house-rule out), I really like the system a lot and I'm really looking forward to an ongoing Mouse Guard game. :) The plan for next session is for the players to actually make their own characters for our campaign.


In other gaming news, my system has been tabled again. I think the game was solid the way it was, but I had an epiphany at about 6am the other day for a change that would result in a game I *like* more. I now just need to work out exactly how i want a couple of related aspects to work. Basically I'm finding out that I like abstract/descriptive/narrative terms better than numbers: I think I'm now trying to make a system that is based on numbers as little as possible. As I was saying to Robb last night, I'd rather have a character in a game who was "Very Strong" and to get a certain advantage for possessing that "trait" than to have a character with a high, numerical strength "score". It's just more intuitive and descriptive.

So yeah, back to game design. I'll get something I'm happy with some day I'm sure ;)... ...and it'll probably only take another 13 mind-changes...


~PS

Friday, June 26th, lunchtime -

Had a great time with the Rosolinas at dinner on wednesday. They're lots of fun - i wish our schedules would let us get together with them more often.

Worked on gaming project a little more, changed some things, hoping to playtest soon.

House clean, Ally had a bath, am eating lunch and finishing up some work.

2009 SET GITP Meet-up is very nearly underway. Some people are already in town, others are heading this way.

More later.

~PS

So I just looked at my calendar for last week, and, apart from work, it's completely empty... ...yet, I feel like I've been very busy somehow.

Apart from the Little Fears session (which was awesome :)) we had at the beginning of this month and the Star Wars game I've joined, we haven't gamed in like two months. Yes, I realize that sounds dumb (ala, "aside from this gaming, I haven't gamed at all"). I guess what I really mean to say is that, due to massive scheduling conflicts, both of my normal, weekend gaming groups have been out of commission for a while. Since April 25th, to be exact.

I'd probably be feeling more severe withdraw symptoms, but I've been using the interim to work on my new gaming system. It's currently composed of about 15 pages of rules and examples plus some prototype character sheets. I also bought about $10 worth of glass pebbles to be used as various markers/tokens for this system. It's pretty much ready to playtest at this point and now that the foundation is laid, I'm about ready to move on to writing some setting stuff. The system itself is designed to be setting-independent, so my options for setting design are pretty much limitless. :)

Once the game reaches Beta (that is, once I've had a chance to playtest it for a few sessions), I intend to post everything in its own little corner of my site. I'm really excited about this thing. Some of you know I've designed systems before, but they've all been very informal and not terribly complete - which is to say, once i started fleshing them out, I abandoned the concepts because they weren't going to work as well as I'd like. This one, on the other hand, has proven to be exactly what I wanted, it has been reasonably well documented and has been developed and tweaked over the course of the last year or more. I feel like it has really solidified - and, most importantly, has remained true to its root philosophies (more on that at a later date).


In other gaming news, I'm still very much looking forward to the Mouse Guard game. I actually got the last issue in the current series (Winter 1152) yesterday, and it's quite good. I previously hadn't thought much about Mouse Guard in a while because, as I said, the group has been unable to meet to play the game and I've been working on other projects. Hopefully (reasonably) soon.


On a different gaming note, over the last week, I've begun and nearly completed the original NES Metroid which I downloaded for my Wii. I even got as far as destroying Mother Brain, but was unable to get out before it exploded (possibly because I thought I had to go back out the way I came in). It's been fun, if occasionally frustrating. After I finally beat it, I think i'll see about getting the SNES Super Metroid.


On a not-at-all-gaming note, The songwriting/music part of my brain has been occasionally bouncing some ideas around as well. I really need to start doing some writing for next year's RPM...


~PS

Sheri, Llama and I took a trip out to North Carolina this weekend to attend our friend Kevin's wedding. It was a nice little ceremony. We're all very happy for them. Stephanie is sweet, and well suited to Kevin in a number of ways. It was good to see him so obviously happy too.

I must confess a bit of mild camera-gear-envy with respect to the photographers' toys. Also, there was a penguin cake at the reception, which was cool.

We got to see some other mutual friends there too - William and Ginger and Mike and Bethany. It's always good to see people we don't get to hang out with much (esp. Ginger who just moved away from us). We spent saturday afternoon and evening hanging out and playing games with Ginger and William. It was a lot of fun - we don't play games as much as we used to.

The car ride was a bit long, and I think Llama was starting to get a little loopy by 2am when we got home, but the trip was successfully completed.

This morning we went to Hopwood Christian Church. We had originally thought we were still going to be in NC this morning and so had arranged for Sheri to have this morning off at our church, but we ended up coming home saturday night and so decided to visit somewhere else. It was nice, actually. Jim Street had a great message about how to bless a fish (heh), and it was probably the most thought-provoking message i've heard in a while - and one that I truly thought embodies the spirit of christianity. We saw the Rosolinas (who we're still trying to have over for dinner sometime) there and also Brian West and his family (who i hadn't had a chance to talk much to in a while). Brian and Danielle invited us over for lunch, and we ended up hanging out and talking for a quite a while.

Brian is trying to get motivated to record some of his songs, and I think this is a great idea. He's been writing for a long time, and he's really into it - but most of his stuff just gets left on the page after it's written and he doesn't have any really good sounding recordings of any of it. We had a lengthy and interesting talk about the technical and artistic aspects of songwriting and recording. I really hope he does something with this. I've even offered to help with the technical stuff which intimidates him a little - not because i'm great, but because i've at least done it before. Maybe it'll get him started.

Tonight we're supposed to have a planning meeting for OotsCon '09. Our crowd this year looks a little smaller and some key people will be missing (and they will be missed), but some *other* people are able to make it this year. Hopefully it will be as successful as it's been the last two years. It's really not about the numbers, it's about the fun - there were only 13 11 of us at the first OotsCon back in '07. Hopefully we'll be able to get our plans ironed out.

My homebrew gaming system has reached Alpha status. I have just a couple more mechanical aspects to iron out, and then the first round of playtesting will begin with whoever i can get to help me out with this. I've discussed the theory of the system at some length with Sheri and Tony, and they both seemed to think it has some potential. It is definitely a bit different in its root philosophy from the games like D&D that we're used to - but I personally think these differences are a *good* thing. At whatever point the system reaches Beta, I'll be posting some more detailed info on it.


~PS

This weekend was Johnson City's annual Blue Plum Festival. Basically, it's a weekend event that takes over downtown JC the first weekend in June. I did, in fact, see some people selling(?) plums, but they were pretty sparse. Mostly it's a bunch of crafts/vendor booths, tons of festival food, and three stages spaced just far enough apart that they don't overlap acoustically (too much).

This was the first year that I would say we've "gone" to the festival. We went and walked around a little a couple years ago, but didn't do or see much - but that was largely ok since it was about 97 degrees. This year, we met up with some friends and enjoyed an afternoon of meandering around together - and I was having a good time taking some pictures. We also met up with some other friends of Robb & Edie's and also with Mahto and some of his buddies so that by the time we had dinner at Mid City, we were a rather sizable group (aside: we still have to get together with Steven for a game of Munchkin).

After our tasty dinner, we went back to a particular stage to see a band called Cutthroat Shamrock. They had been compared by some friends of mine to groups like Flogging Molly and Dropkick Murphys. They are basically an Irish-flavored punk group. I wouldn't say they were amazing, but it was a good show: they all played their instruments well and had good stage presence and personality. About the only "critique" i would give is that most of their songs had the same kind of sound. It was a *good* sound, there just wasn't much variety. Still, i think a couple of friends picked up a couple of their records, and i liked them enough to be interested in hearing some more.

Some pictures of the Blue Plum are up in the Gallery.

(kinda) Speaking of, i'm looking into possibly picking up my music hobby again sometime soon for some song writing (maybe for next year's rpm).

In gaming news: I finally got to continue my Little Fears game from RuchtCon! I love this game, and i've greatly enjoyed coming up with spooky stuff to put in it...though after i've been working on it, I find i'm a little edgy at night. I think I empathize a little too much with the children in the story. Anyway, If you've taken a look at the Gaming page recently, you've seen the novel of a session summary i've written up for it.

Still looking to start up Mouse Guard, but it probably won't happen until next month, due to scheduling.

Also, i'm working on finalizing (finally) the simple mechanics for the homebrew roleplaying system (which still needs a name) that i've been working on for the past...too long.

The 3rd Annual GitP Southeast Trogland meetup is fast approaching. We've had several people cancel on us unfortunately, but we're still expecting a decent crowd and fun times. That'll be 26th-28th of this month.

Played the zombie-killing board game Last Night On Earth for the first time on friday. Despite dying in the first 5 minutes, it was pretty fun. It seems pretty much straight-up die rolling players-vs-zombies though, as, apart from trying to get some 'hero cards' (w/ items or special actions) to play, there really isn't much else you can do - and strategy seems to generally boil down to "do we want to be together, or separate?" Answer: together.
Anyway, post-game thoughts: 1) The Sheriff sucks. Yes, i know he's the only character that gets to start with a gun. You know what? He sucks with that gun. He forgets to load it and, even if he has some, he can't hit the broad side of a zombie. 2) If you are the priest, do whatever you can to get the pitchfork. Yes, I know that doesn't make sense, but the priest can't use guns. I (somehow) killed like 8 zombies with the pitchfork. It felt ridiculous, though awesome. 3) In theory (statistically), it's much easier to kill a zombie with a gun than with something like the pitchfork. In practice: yeah right.

As for the Wii, i'm currently addicted to Excite Truck - a stunt-racing game Rucht gave us for christmas. It has a bunch of unlockable stuff, and it's capable of some pretty impressive crashes. Sheri's kind of good at this game, but mostly she just sucks really, really well.

Wanting to go ride our bikes, but we're waiting for Sheri's ankle (which she hurt a while back) to be (more) fully recovered.

~PS

This last week has been pretty crazy. A lot of out-of-the-ordinary has gone on. This is really 3 or 4 blogs in one - and is mostly just a 'state of the penguin' address.

Last Tuesday, Sheri and I went to Milligan's faculty/staff picnic - which was open to "many" part-time employees this year (the wording of the invitation email left something to be desired). It was actually pretty cool. I knew quite a few people there and got to talk to some I didn't know so well. I also got to talk to Dr. Beck for a little while, which was cool. She was one of my Sociology profs at Milligan and one of my favorite professors overall. She told me i could sit in on one of her classes if I want sometime - which I'll probably do if i can find one at a time that doesn't conflict with other stuff too much.

Last Thursday I got to join Patrick's Star Wars game. I've generally enjoyed the Star Wars games i've played in before and the rules for the new system are fairly simple (which i like). It was a lot of fun and i'm looking forward to continuing it in a couple of weeks.

On Friday, Kevin and Steph (his fiance) came into town, along with Mike and Bethany (some friends we don't get to see much). The girls all went out to have a sort of bachelorette party for Ginger and Mike, Kevin and I went to see a (decidedly mediocre) movie.

After that, we all met up again to throw Kevin in the creek at Milligan around midnight. That might require a little explanation for some of you. Apparently Milligan has a "tradition" wherein guys who become engaged at Milligan are thrown into the creek by their buddies. The triggers for this operation have since been blurred to include Milligan alumni as well, so Ginger and Steph decided Kevin was fair game. I've personally always thought this tradition was dumb, and strikes me as locker-room behavior. (Sidenote: When I proposed to Sheri, I made it quite clear to some friends that this would not be happening - or, if it did, people would be physically harmed in the process and we might not all consider each other friends afterward. I have found that being physically forced into something I don't want is one of the few things that will trigger a violent reaction from me. I am very thankful they respected my wishes here.) Everyone else, however, seems to think this is great, and as long as all involved are reasonably amenable, it doesn't inherently bother me. The only reason I was involved, however, was because Ginger asked me to take pictures, which I did. Those have been posted in the Gallery :)

Saturday was moving day for Ginger. A bunch of us descended upon her apartment and possessions and spent the hours between 10am and 4pm (more or less) packing up stuff and loading it in a u-haul. After that we all went out to Mid-City Grill and had a good time relaxing and talking after a tiring afternoon. Unfortunately then we had to say some goodbyes, which sucked. I think things will be a little better for her up in VA, but we all miss Ginger a lot. Hopefully we'll get to see her from time to time. It's not the same when someone's missing.

Sunday was "recovery day" from the late nights and monumental-packing done earlier in the weekend. We went to church, but beyond that we didn't do very much. I briefly considered mowing the lawn, but decided against it (in part due to rain). That'll probably get done today.

Yesterday was Memorial Day, so we had an extra day off. In order to take advantage of the warm holiday, we decided to go hiking. The weather threatened to rain us out, but we decided to go anyway. We went out to the lower entrance to Laurel Falls and hiked around there for a while. Due to some trickiness in the trail, we never actually *found* said falls. Yes, I know that sounds ridiculous. At a certain point, none of us could find the trail and, given its location perched above the creek, I was disinclined to mess around too much since I had my camera. We talked to some people later who explained it to us and we think we know where it is now. We still had a great time and I got some good pictures, which have been posted in the Gallery.

After the hiking we grilled some hot dogs and then Sheri and I went into town and ended up buying some bicycles. Before that sounds totally random, let me give you some background:
Some time ago, we decided the 5th Anniversary is the Bicycle Anniversary and so we decided we'd get some bicycles as anniversary presents for each other. Sheri had said she wanted to get them before our actual anniversary because by the time we get to late July, a lot of the good cycling weather for the year is behind us - so we'd been looking around. We initially looked at Dick's Sporting Goods, but most of those seemed really expensive and we didn't really need anything amazingly cool. We also looked at walmart (though I was/am disinclined to buy a bicycle from them), target and even toys-r-us - just trying to see what was available and to evaluate some prices. So yesterday, we decided to go to the mall for something completely different - something we'd never actually end up doing, as it turns out.
We entered through Dick's (as we usually do) and decided to go look at the bikes again - just for fun. We ended up finding a couple that weren't much more expensive than one's we'd priced elsewhere and this was actually the first time Sheri found one she really liked. So after quite a bit of discussion, we decided to go ahead and get them.
I'm glad we ended up buying from an actual sporting goods place. The guy there was able to answer some questions and when we'd decided to buy something, he went over everything (gear changers, brakes, tire pressure, etc) on both of them, making sure everything was working smoothly and correctly and in good condition. IMO, this was worth the $20 price difference.
So we're excited about this. We know of a few places around here that will be lots of fun to go and ride (which will be practical once we have a carrying rack - getting them home last night was *possible*, but not pretty) and i'm sure there are quite a few others.

So now we're sort-of back to the usual grind - but not completely. It'll be a short week for me as I'm taking this Friday off since my parents are coming into town this weekend... ...so we'll be getting ready for that this week. That'll be fun too.

~PS

...that D&D is going in a direction I don't like. It could just be that I'm unfairly biased against 4e (which i probably am) and so tend to look down on a lot of their marketing - and maybe i misinterpret things - but some things just rub me the wrong way. And I also know it's more what you *do* with it than what they tell you to do with it, but still. Often, I overlook such things, but when something strikes me as blatantly as this, I feel somehow compelled to respond - at least to myself.

On Penny Arcade, I just saw a banner ad which read:

If you want to play this guy [picture of mini], you pick up this box [picture of mini in packaging] /cut. tag: Play the character you want. Player's Handbook Heroes: Series 1. Logo: Dungeons & Dragons. Subtext: Never Split The Party

Problems I have with this (these are actually all inter-related, but they break down into 3 broad points):

1) Product == fun (ala tabletop minis games, ccg's, etc). "If you want to play this guy, you pick up this box". One of the biggest strengths of the roleplaying hobby is that it doesn't require spending lots of money. The books are typically expensive, but really, while it's good for all the players to have a players book, a group really only *needs* one (I played for several months before I had any gaming books[/uphillbothways]). Here, it's telling me that I'll need something *else* to play their game, or at least to play it the "right" way. Oh, and so will all my friends. Oh, and the GM will probably need a bunch of these things to depict npc's, etc.

2) Stifle Creativity (ala video games). "Play the character you want. Player's Handbook Heroes: Series 1". What? The game is meant to have a near-infinite number of character possibilities. Do they also have a near-infinite number of miniatures to depict all possible combinations and styles? Doubtful. No, these are minis depicting the iconic characters from the books. What happened the the creativity of coming up with your *own* stuff? Now i'm expected to pick something from a store shelf to be "my" character? It's one thing to try to go find a mini that looks like your character because you *want* to - it's quite another to say "this guy looks cool, I think i'll play him".

3) Encourage Poor Roleplaying / Winning Is What Matters (ala mmorpgs) - "Never Split The Party". Ok, I know a lot of players who live by this mantra, but I personally hate it. Not because it's tactically unsound (which is generally their reasoning), but because it's unrealistic. No matter how much your characters like each other, sooner or later they're going to have things they want or need to do by themselves. It's one thing when you're in some cursed dungeon, it's quite another when you're in town or somewhere your characters would not expect trouble (even if the players are). The whole "Never split the party" idea makes me want to force them to roleplay bathroom breaks and then send a rabid krenshar after some character peeing in the woods. The players in my games are usually pretty good about this, but that's because most of them are there to roleplay, not simply "defeat" the challenges presented.

Ok, I'm done.

~PS

...that i can mash the button on the jeep's clicker for five minutes and it will not unlock for anything, but i can then hand it to Sheri and she'll push the button once and, click, it works...???

Research is currently underway to determine if this is also related to the Pickle Jar Phenomenon.

And now, the news (in no particular order):

Getting new tires on the jeep tomorrow. Yay rah exciting, i know, but it needs done.

We played catch in our backyard today. This seems random, and it is, but Sheri had been saying for a couple years that we should get some ball gloves and baseball and play catch because it would be fun. We had a couple of walmart gift cards, and it seemed an amusing thing to spend them on.

I think the last of Hikaru's current computer problems has been isolated and (somewhat) solved. I love my computers... ...when they work.

Had a great time jamming at the Hippie Hut yesterday. I think we're still one band member short, but it's going pretty well.

Continuing to go over the Mouse Guard rules and trying to get one of the current D&D story arcs wrapped up so i can put it on the back burner for a while in the interest of something new.

Been looking over some camera lenses and reviews of them. I know i want a long telephoto, a super-wide-angle and a wide-aperture prime (probably 50mm), but i keep going back-and-forth regarding exactly which ones i'm after. Oh well, i've got time.

Had a going away party for Ginger last weekend - which she almost missed ;). I think we had a dozen people or so. I took a few pictures - but didn't get too many before my flash batteries died. I hadn't thought about bringing the camera until right before we left and at that point i didn't have time to charge them. Anyway, we had a bit of a cookout and then sat around and talked for a good while. Later we played a game of Apples to Apples, which is always fun. It was a good time. We're going to miss Ginger a lot. :(

~PS

First off, had a great time playing Pirates' Cove last night. It's a fun game that I believe lives up to the Days of Wonder name with such greats as Ticket to Ride and Shadows over Camelot.

Secondly, I finally got the Mouse Guard Roleplaying Game book. Like i've mentioned before, i tried to order it through Mt. Empire Comics because I know the guy who runs the place and thought i'd help him out... ...but apparently he had some trouble getting it and so i resorted to Books-a-Million (partly because i was tired of waiting, and partly because if it *was* getting to be hard to come by, I wanted to get it while i knew i could). Anyway, it looks awesome. I've read the whole thing once and several parts of it two or three times. I'm nearly ready to do something with it.

Thirdly, I still want to continue my Little Fears game from RuchtCon. I even went on amazon.com to see if i could find the book. I did. Starting at about $60. I should point out it's a rather small and flimsy softcover with innumerable typos - not exactly the kind of thing i'd consider spending that much on. Thing is, it's out of print. Luckily, i really don't *need* the book to run the game and Rucht has a copy of it if we find we do. I have learned, however, that as of February Little Fears: Nightmare Edition is in progress yet again. Apparently it's been a long time in coming as it was announced in 2006. I also read on the Little Fears Yahoo newsgroup yesterday that the author's production computer is in the shop (I feel his pain). If and when this finally gets published, i plan to pick it up. Hopefully for considerably than $60.

On a quasi-related note, my iMac is still in the shop, but i'm hoping to get it back soon. I'm pretty satisfied with how my macbook has risen to the challenge of being my primary work machine, but it's not a good desktop replacement.

~PS

Finally went to Thunderdome last night. Pretty cool place. We watched some guy beat Force Unleashed on a giant projector screen, played Apples to Apples and ate some tasty food.

The weather yesterday was awesome and we had a bit of a picnic at the Linear Trail park in Erwin. Due to the fact that there's only one picnic table in the area we went to, we ended up having lunch with a random couple. They were nice and fun to talk to. They lived in Alaska for a few years, which i thought was cool. Yay for meeting random people.

Went to John's on saturday to see if my MouseGuard stuff had come in yet. Still hasn't - apparently it's on back-order and some of it's hard to get. He did have a couple issues I didn't have though, so i picked those up (which was kind of nice - the last few times i've been in there it's been 'walk in, ask about stuff, walk out'). Actually, i misread the back of one and so accidentally bought one i already had... ...so Llama got to inherit it. Still much looking forward to getting the roleplaying book. :-D

Had a gaming session on friday night, which i think was good despite several of us being tired (and some occasionally nodding off...heh). The "plot" at this point is pretty open because i wanted to put the players into a situation where they have to decide what to do about the circumstances. This isn't bad, but it's less straight-forward and usually results in the players having to weigh lots of options and so it can move kind of slowly at times. I think they're doing well with it though.
I'm also really trying to get to a few plot points before Ginger moves... ...we'll miss her a lot...

On some house stuff: mowing season has begun, and it's already getting ahead of me. We had a pretty impressive storm the other night and the basement stayed dry - looks like my sealing job around the font doorjamb worked well. Oh, and i unclogged the sink which had been draining ridiculously slowly for a while.

I've been addicted to Super Paper Mario lately - I started it about a week ago and i've now played it enough to pass Ginger and Tony in the plot (though Tony's still a few levels above me - he's been working on the Flopside Pit of 100 Trials). It's a very fun game... ...and since Sheri won't let me play Okami...


~PS

So this last weekend was RuchtCon '09 - our own little gaming convention in honor of our friend Rucht's birthday. Festivities formally started friday afternoon and went till sunday at about 6pm. It went down a little like this:

The first official 'slot' began at 9pm on Friday night. This was when i ran my Little Fears game. That was awesome. I was a little worried going in since i'd been a little sick for the previous days and also hadn't had quite as much prep time as I might have liked (largely due to VBS), but I would say it went as well as it possibly could - aside from some drowsiness on our part toward the end of the session.
The game was incredibly fun. The system is very, very simple but plays very well. The players all did a fantastic job of getting into their roles as children - which they all seemed to enjoy immensely. I think my story came off just about exactly as dark as I wanted it to, and it seemed to me that the session did a great job of portraying the quintessence of the game.
I would definitely be interested in running some more of this, perhaps beginning with the resolution to this scenario - which we weren't able to finish.

The other table on Friday was ran by Patrick doing his Star Wars game. I obviously wasn't able to play in it (unfortunately) so there's not much I can say about it, but Sheri said it was a lot of fun.

On saturday afternoon Rucht ran his 40k Dark Heresy game while some of the rest of us decided to play board games.
Specifically, we decided to learn to play Talisman - a Fantasy Flight game that my mom (yes, really) got me for Christmas last year. This presented a fairly major challenge as 1) none of us actually knew how to play the game and 2) the game is (now) put out by Fantasy Flight - a game company that's notorious for amazingly complex games. *Good* games mind you, but complex ones.
It took us about an hour to get through the rules and setup. The game really isn't that hard, but when you're trying to understand it with absolutely zero foreknowledge and using only the rulebook, things take a little while. Once we got going, it went pretty fast. We didn't actually finish it, but we got to the final phases. I thought it was a pretty cool game. I look forward to playing it again - when i don't have to be constantly trying to figure out what we're doing.

Saturday night was the first session of Rucht's Witch Hunter game and also Robb's Werewolf game. I had opted to play in Robb's game. Granted I haven't played whitewolf in quite a while (except Exalted), but the new edition seems to have streamlined some things. We didn't actually make it very far into the story, but it was still a very enjoyable game. We got to do a bit of roleplaying (though i think i was feeling a little off), a bit of combat, and all of us got to use our respective character's niche strengths.

Sunday morning was still technically part of the Con, but it was pretty informal - i think those who were present played the Battlestar Galactica board game. The official sunday afternoon slot was another session of Rucht's Witch Hunter game.
I was really looking forward to this. I'd heard great things about the system, and it was particularly cool to get to play under one of the game designers (for those who don't know, this is a game that Rucht actually helped design). I mean, that has to be the most authentic experience, right?
This game was lots of fun. It's a solid system - similar to whitewolf in some ways, but considerably different in others. Also, it has some very interesting mechanics. The premise for the world and the game is very detailed and interesting as well and the modules Rucht ran were excellent narratives. I'd love to play some more of this - esp if Rucht wanted to run a campaign at some point. That would be awesome.


In addition to all the fun games, we had tasty snacks, plenty of great people, and just a generally great time hanging out. A fantastic way to spend a weekend. Some of us have definite intentions of putting something like this together again sometime - and have even talked a little about what we might do the same and/or differently.


~PS

I've read the Little Fears rulebook completely more than twice and have reviewed/studied several sections. There are actually some pretty gaping holes in the game. Some of that is intentional - there are actually places in the book that say 'boiling this concept down to crude mechanics wouldn't do it justice'... ...which is all well and good, but i wouldn't have minded some suggested examples as to how said concept may be implemented. The focus of the game is much more on storytelling and much less on mechanics - which is not a bad thing, but when you're trying to figure out how a game *works*, it's a bit of a challenge. Basically, i've had to invent a few things for my own purposes (which it seems to encourage you to do) - something i generally don't mind doing anyway.

I have created 5 player characters, complete with expanded descriptions/backgrounds. I'm hoping to find out soon how many players i'll have (and who they are) so i can make sure i have a character (of the right gender) for everyone.

I've got the rudiments of the general plot constructed. I'm trying to make it mysterious, yet still able to be exposed within a single gaming session - which is going to be a bit difficult.

After i get that duct-taped in place (you never want to actually nail down this stuff...), the next step is planning how i expect or want the actual gaming session to progress. This is a rather delicate task - to give the players enough direction without railroading them.

I've got the better part of two weeks to finish. I hope this all manifests as cool as it seems in my head.

~PS

My gaming hobby has made a rather sharp resurgence of late - though not in the way it normally does.

As some of you know, whenever i start talking about my hobbies, i ramble. This is likely to be exceptionally long-winded. I'm not sorry, but i *am* sorry that i'm not sorry.

It all started when formal planning for RuchtCon '09 began. For any who might not know, RuchtCon was conceived by a friend of ours (Rucht) who wanted to have a miniature gaming convention for his birthday. This is to be held on the third weekend of this month, whereon we will spend ridiculous hours playing rpgs as well as board and video games. It's a *fantastic* idea and i wish i'd thought of it. When planning began, Rucht asked for volunteers for people to run games for his mini-con. Of course i volunteered immediately.

My plan was to (finally) introduce the fantasy version of the Roman Colosseum i've been devising for some time now. It was to be a massive-scale, morphing encounter with multiple goals that would require wits as well as strength and also an ability to please onlookers - which could grant you boons or hindrances in the arena.

However, my game was but one of perhaps a dozen rpg's mentioned for potential playing. When i saw the survey Rucht sent out, i was sure there was just too much gaming goodness to fit into a single weekend. I decided to check a bunch of stuff i'd never played before, but that looked really cool - to sort of sample the field, as it were.

When i noticed several of the new games didn't have a designated GM, i was quick to offer to fill in such a gap if necessary, assuming i could get a sourcebook - because really, i'm a GM at heart. I love to play these kinds of games, but I enjoy running them even more. Coming up with my own stories and getting to have my friends bring them to life is my favorite part of the roleplaying hobby.

Exhibit A
I also mentioned in my reply that one of the games on the list marked as GM-less seemed particularly interesting to me: it was a game called Little Fears.

Basically, Little Fears is a kind of horror/fairy-tale kind of game where all of the characters are children, and all of the things kids are afraid of (things that go 'bump' in the night, the monsters in the closet and under the bed, the bogeyman, etc) are all very, very real. The concept just fascinates me.

Apparently, most of those attending RuchtCon shared a similar mindset to mine - wanting to try new things. It seems that my plain 'ol D&D game didn't really generate much interest in the face of so much new potential awesomeness. While part of me still wants to run that game at some point, I'm much more excited about what we're going to be playing now...

Since my original offering didn't get much interest and i had offered to run something - and specifically mentioned Little Fears - Rucht asked if I would pick it up and run it for them. I was completely thrilled to accept the challenge and picked up the book from him the next day (saturday morning). In the less-than-36-hours since then, i've read the rulebook cover-to-cover, reviewed several sections and have the broad outline of a scenario to present in my head. I'm looking forward to continuing work on it. The game seems really cool. Lots of potential.

There were several other games on the list that seemed potentially awesome as well - games that i think i could really get into. All this kinda got me to thinking: basically, we only play D&D. I guess it's because it's a system we all know, and fantasy roleplaying comes pretty easy to most of us. Still, seeing all the other games and reading their descriptions got me thinking - maybe it's time to branch out. *GASP*. I know.

Don't get me wrong, i still love D&D (well, version 3.5 anyway. in fact, we had a *great* session last night) and i'll always be willing to have a game of it running... ...i'd just like to pick up some new stuff as well. Kind of the 'keep old friends, but make new ones too' idea...

Anyway, we happened to go to a few different bookstores on friday (strangely enough), so i made a point to go peruse the adventure gaming sections therein (...as if that wasn't what i'd have been doing anyway...) to see what i could see.

Exhibit B
At Mr. K's I ran into Rem (who i hadn't seen in a while) and had a nice chat with him about some random games. He mentioned one to me that sounded interesting and I later found and leafed through it at Barnes & Noble: White Wolf's new edition of Hunter - this time called 'The Vigil'. (most of their games are titled 'Something: The Something Else'. Heh.).

Hunter: The Vigil is basically about people who have somehow discovered the demons and monsters that lurk in the shadows of our everyday lives and are driven to combat them and otherwise rid the world of them. It's like a pretty cool game - and the new edition looks particularly good. If i was going to do a modern game, it would probably be something like this. I decided i might be interested in picking it up at some point.

Exhibit C
At Books-a-Million though, i ran into something that was truly awesome. Probably the coolest thing i've seen all year. In their (rather pathetic excuse for an) adventure game section, i saw a lone rulebook for an rpg called Mouse Guard. The cover of the book shows a large array of mice in various fantasy-esque costumes. I picked it up and stared at it in disbelief for a full minute. Mouse. Guard. It's mice. Fantasy mice. Mice struggling valiantly to survive against owls and weasels and all manner of other predators. It was like LOTR meets the Mouse and the Motorcycle. Actually, it reminded me a lot of Redwall. And Reepicheep.

I started flipping through the book. The whole thing was beautifully illustrated and the game seemed really cool and relatively simple (I like simple). I made up my mind then and there that I will have this game, and I will run it.

Still, like most rp books, it was a tad expensive - about $35. I figured i'd look it up on amazon.com, since it would certainly be cheaper there. Amazon did indeed have it for about $23, but more importantly, amazon led me to discover something else about it: it's based on a comic series of the same name.

Now, I don't read comic books (or "graphic novels") - it's just not something i'm into... ...but the game just looked so awesome i decided this was something i needed to check out - just to see what it's all about.

Saturday morning (while sheri was at choir practice) I went into John's (Mt. Empire Comics on Road St.), since llama told me he had some of the Mouse Guard stuff. No one else was there, so i started talking to John when i came in and asked him about it. He showed me where it was & said it looked pretty cool. I told him I was gonna leaf through a couple, just to check 'em out.

At this point, i had pretty much decided i just wanted to get a feel for the world and the characters to know what it was intended to be... ...but if it wasn't the sort of thing i envisioned after looking through the rp book, i was already preparing in my mind to reinvent it for the purposes of the game i was determined to buy and run. To my surprise, however, the world and characters were exactly the kind of thing I'd envisioned - and i loved it. I actually bought 4 issues. So i guess i've been sucked into a comic now...

(I found out later, however, that the issues i bought were kind of in the middle of a story (even though they were at the beginning of a series)... ...so i need to go pick up the 6 that precede them before i'll *really* know what's going on beyond simple context deduction. Luckily, there are only a total of 11 issues in existence right now (12 is due in april, i think), so i should be able to pick up all of them from the beginning without spending too much)

Now i'm even more excited about the game, and i had John order the roleplaying book for me. (I had previously planned to get it for cheaper off amazon, but John's a good guy and his store is a nice place. I'll pay a bit more to support him, you know?)

Exhibit D
Finally, I'm starting to pick up some of my homebrew stuff again. It all has a *long* way to go, but i've started kicking around ideas again and trying to come up with the worlds' foundations. If and when they get significantly further along, i'm sure i'll have more posted on them (as i've said before)... ...but these tend to be picked up and put down a lot (for some reason)....so they're likely to be a long time in coming.

Also, i'm still waiting on Robb to pick up his Exalted game again... ...i have shiny new dice for it and everything... ;)


...so many games, so little time...


~PS

So today's the first day of february and RPM - sadly, i'm in Erwin for most of the day and can't do much in the way of recording. I *can* however, work on some preliminary stuff now that I have a macbook, which i'll be starting in a bit. 27 more days. Deep breath...

Had two great gaming sessions this weekend. Sadly, one of the games is losing a player. I will admit slightly shrinking that group is not all bad (6 players is a little past my 'ideal'), but we'll miss having Nick around for the next year. The other group had a good time with session #2 last night. I'm enjoying the progressing stories and interactions for both games immensely, each in its own way.

We got to see Bart & Sarah's baby Joe today - he's 9 days old. And quite adorable.

In more serious/troubling news, we discovered this week that a tumor Sheri's mom had removed was malignant and that she'll be having more surgery soon. We're beginning to make some initial preparations for a trip out to AR to be with her and the rest of the family for that, but we're not sure exactly when it will be as yet. We're also a little concerned about the weather, since they've had a really bad ice storm and a large part of the region has been declare a disaster area and is without power and a little short on other provisions.

I think that's everything on the list for now...

~PS

Just a couple of things to mention about the weekend:

After the holiday hiatus, we got back into gaming in a big way this weekend.

First, we continued my long-time-running game with session #23 on friday night. That game has been running for about 14 months now, and for the most part i'm still pretty into it. The weight of continuity is a little difficult to deal with at times, but overall the story s progressing pretty fluidly and it continues to be fun.

The game got off to a bit of a late start and was only a couple hours, but it was still a good session I think. Whilst we were waiting for the last players to arrive, we had Robb & Edie watch the Gamers - sadly, i don't think they were as amused by it as I am. Heh.

I also started a new game on saturday for a couple of players who haven't had the chance to game in a while. It was intended to be a pretty simple straightforward game - and for the most part it is - but I discovered that even simple and episodic plots and adventures seem very involved very quickly when you start mapping out how and why things happen. I've also put a lot of work into the particular corner of the setting they're in, the people that inhabit it and some histories that lead to some current adventures. Also a good session.

Today was a bit odd for a sunday - church was canceled due to ice on the roads. It's been really cold the last few days, and last night there was some pretty nasty sleet and stuff... ...so instead of being in Erwin all day, we've been hanging out here playing some video games & other random stuff. Most notably, Sheri has started Okami - a Wii game I got her for christmas. I haven't really got to play it yet, but it looks really cool. I think she likes it, though it occasionally frustrates her. In any case, she's been playing it for a couple hours now - so it can't be too bad. :) I also got a bit further in Mario Galaxy (which Sheri got *me* for christmas) and she was helping me find secret stars and collect star bits. In other, related news - Ginger, Sheri and Tony have all started games of Super Paper Mario (which my sister got us for christmas - it was a good year for wii games), which has to be the most bizarre Mario game to date. I've yet to dive into that insanity. Heh.

~PS

I'm currently sitting in our church's sanctuary while Sheri directs here choir practice. I had to get up at 8:30 on a saturday. Blah. Also, my left leg hurts for some unknown reason. Yeah, yeah. Complain, complain.

Anyway, gas is down to $1.99/gal here in Erwin. As I've previously declared, I stop complaining about it when it drops below $2.


One of the reasons I so disliked getting up at 8:30 this morning so much is because we had a rather late gaming session last night (not that i would have wanted to get up that early on a saturday *anyway*). The party wound up in a rather large and somewhat pivotal combat and we didn't want to break off in the middle of that. It was worth staying up for though.

As it turned out, we only had 4/6 of our players last night. We *thought* we were going to have 5/6, but another player had a minor crisis to attend to and had to bow out at the last minute. Since the rest of us were there already and wanted to game, and since 4 is a decent number, we decided to play anyway. I generally don't like to play with more than one player absent, but the way scheduling gets with a 6-player game, I'm starting to think the options are accept some absences when necessary, or just don't play - and the lower the acceptable number of players, the more likely it'll happen. I'm completely open to suggestions from the player on this (as always), but i may lower my 'gaming threshold' to 4 players in the interest of actually playing. When there's a month between sessions, i tend to get out of 'the groove' and it usually takes me an hour or so into the session just to get back in tune with the world & what's going on...and when you're only meeting once a month(ish) for a few hours, you don't get very far when your gm is constantly 'loading'...

Despite the fact that we missed a couple of players (and we *did* miss them), I think it was a good session. The party accomplished something important, we laughed at a lot of in-game jokes, and all the players seemed to be enjoying the game. Even Nick commented that the last, monumental encounter had been particularly interesting & fun - and that meant a lot to me. I have a lot of fun coming up with interesting/intricate/bizarre scenarios for the players to encounter & deal with, but my biggest goal is always to make sure the players enjoy the game. When they really seem to be having fun in a session, it's a success. I consider myself to be a good gm, and i think my game and the world is interesting, believable, and fun to play in - and i do take some amount of pride in it - but some of the players are harder to read than others and I can't always tell if they're really into it. Sessions like last night's are good ones. :-)


As for today - we have some errands to run after this choir practice wraps up, and then we're heading over to Nick's where he's going to make us all some burgers for *his* birthday. Apparently, he insisted on this. I'm not gonna complain. I think the plan is to spend the evening playing board games. :-)

We've now officially entered the Season of Celebrations - we have a ton of birthdays interspersed with the upcoming holidays. Very busy time of year, but in a good way overall.


~PS

So we randomly had a 'net friend in town for a couple of days at the end of last week. Midnight Son stopped through as part of his massive, cross-country biker trip and we all had a great time hanging out with him again. He's a great guy - hopefully he'll be able to make it to the 2009 SE GitP Meetup Extravaganza.

As was alluded to in the comments of the last entry, a good chunk of friday was spent modding nerf guns. The Hippie brought his over along with some power tools, and with that and what we had at the Igloo, we made some standard mods to the guns and also primed & painted them to give 'em a kind of steampunk feel. They are looking *great*. Yesterday I got some clear-coat to seal mine once i've decided i'm done with it (and once i get a day with less than 70% humidity).

Had some good gaming earlier this week and looking forward to some more tonight. Speaking of which, I've got mayhem that needs planning.

Later,

~PS

Summer has faded into fall just a bit. The weather has been awesome the last week or so - highs in the 60's & 70's. A little rain, but for the most part, beautiful. I love this time of year.

Not too much has been going on here since we got back from vacation. Just kinda getting back into the normal subroutines - so this post is pretty much just that.

Last saturday was our church's 'Block Party' event. Basically, we had food and music and were trying to get to know some random people in the community. I had quite a bit of fun taking pictures of the band. I think it went pretty well despite being relocated when it started to rain.

A few of us went to the new(ish) german restaurant in downtown JC last night. It was quite tasty, though i wasn't nearly hungry enough for the amount of sandwich i got. I thought the building itself was pretty cool - it was a corner lot of a downtown building complex(? what do you call that?) that had a kind of loft (where we sat) and a west-facing window that caught a lot of the setting sun. Our waiter was really friendly and knew what he was doing. They even had live music - a german vocalist accompanied by an accordion. It all kind of sounded the same (to me, anyway), but it was at least interesting and different. It was a pretty cool place all around i think, though i have to say the hostesses' uniforms were trying a bit too hard... ...in at least a couple of different ways.

Today was the second day of the Apple Festival in Erwin. We went out to help with our church's fundraiser - in which they let people park in the lot for said festival for $5. I think it went pretty well and raised a fair amount of money for the youth group. We walked around the festival a bit after too. I took a few pictures of the mayhem. I got a bit really sunburned through all this too.

Speaking of church, i've been trying to put together the beginnings of a website for them. Again. They've been wanting to do this forever, but, well, our church just takes a longer time getting around to certain things than other people might... ...so i thought i'd put something together and we can all go from there (instead of waiting for people to get around to giving me info).

I did notice one kind of funny thing while we were out there today: A few teenage kids were walking down the street toward the festival, and they happened upon the spot where I had parked the jeep. They stopped, and I noticed one of the kids point at the D&D sticker in my back window. I'm not sure whether they were saying "hey, look at this loser" or "who in Erwin plays d&d?" or what, but it was kind of amusing to witness.

Speaking of gaming, our last session was about a week ago. It was a good one, though almost all combat. A few things happened (or didn't happen) that may have some unforeseen consequences next session or later. That game is approaching the 1-year mark, and it continues to be very enjoyable.

I've been trying to get some work done on my gaming project. I've made significant progress and it continues to get more and more interesting, but I still have a *long* way to go. I've contemplated setting a sort of deadline for myself to help motivate me... ...though i'm not sure if that would be good or bad for the creative process.

I've been listening to commentaries on dvds i have while i work (and/or do other stuff at my desk) a lot lately. I've found that amusing/random dialog is an enjoyable acoustic background - esp when i'm here by myself. In particular, i've been listening to the ones on the Red vs Blue dvds quite a bit, as i really enjoy the creativity that went into that project. I would totally try to do something machinimish if i could think of something truly original. It would probably suck, but i think the experience of learning to do some video editing/production would be cool. I haven't done any of that since high school, and the technology has completely morphed since then.

Sheri and I have been trying to think of some christmas presents for people. This is mostly Sheri's doing, as i probably wouldn't be thinking about this for another month & a half. We're coming up a little short on ideas, but we've got one or two. And at least some time.

So anyway, that's where my stream-of-consciousness ends.

~PS

Ok, so i really wanted a codename for this - something that would be cool and in some way symbolic, but not overly trite or pretentious. I wanted said codename for three basic reasons:

1. Because i'm just enough of a geek to think codenames are cool.
2. To have a short-hand way of referring to the project...
3. ...because i don't want to release the actual name just yet. I mean, if i come right out and say it's going to be called Perils in the Domain of Zombie Chicken, it won't be quite as cool when i actually want to 'publish' info for the Zombie Egg Player's Guide and the Monster Chicken Manual - don't you think?

Anyway, I haven't been able to think of anything that met the aforementioned criteria, so for now I guess i'll just refer to it as 'this thing i'm working on'.

I haven't talked really talked about it much on the blog, but some of you know that off-and-on for about the last 8 months, i've been working on a new gaming system and setting. (You know, because with creating/running 2-3 D&D games, pursuing my other hobbies, work, our house, hanging out with friends, etc has left me just so much free time
that i don't know what to do with...) It's been pretty sparse for the most part, and i probably don't have much more than 40 hours worth of work on it...but a lot of thought has gone into it.

Now, I really *do* like D&D (3rd edition, anyway) and have no intention of abandoning it, but I've always wanted to create my own gaming system since back before we started playing that one. We had some fun times with some of my early attempts at such things, but they were all very nebulous and I wouldn't go so far as to say they were coherent systems. So when i got this sort of interesting idea for a new setting a while back, I figured it would be cool to work it out and write a roleplaying system to go with it.

Since that time, my ideas for this project have morphed so much as to be almost unrecognizable from the original concept. The last couple of weeks have been very productive regarding this project - I managed to get a few key points of inspiration that have really helped to solidify some of the ideas i was kicking around. At this point, I think both the setting and the mechanics are about 80% set - which is to say I'm now planning on starting Phase 2, which will be starting to actually write this stuff up (and the ironing out of the remaining 20% of the details). We're about to go on a vacation during which I should have a fair bit of free time and I'm hoping to get a fair amount compiled then.

Finally, some notes/thoughts for posterity:

The setting I think will be very interesting and fun to play in/with, as it's a bit unusual. The one concern I have regarding it (that i'm trying to work out) is its scalability: i.e., how many different ways can the pc's interact with the setting. I don't think it will be greatly limiting, but I do think it will color a lot of the game - probably a good deal more than a setting ordinarily does.

The mechanics is where I think i might lose some people (esp. the d20 purists): basically it's something like a d&d-inspired, de-muddled white-wolf system. I chose this sort of thing for several reasons, but i won't go into all that here. It is meant to be very simple (at least on the surface) and I think the primary complaint i'll get is that the pc's will seem too similar at first glance. I don't really think that will actually be the case, but the differentiation between them will be more on the shoulders of the players in terms of backstory, character development, etc as opposed to having lots of mechanics make decisions for you by way of pc 'classes', etc. Also, another modified game/setting I've been running (Liimar - which was another, earlier fork of a similar thought process to the design of this game) has proven to me that roleplaying and story are far, far more important than whatever mechanical system is employed (or even what abilities the characters have) when it comes to an enjoyable campaign - and this system is being constructed with that specifically in mind.

~PS

So on saturday i got to play in a golf tournament. It was a fund-raising event for the East TN Christian Home, and our church was sponsoring a hole and a team to go play. One of the guys who was supposed to go was kind of busy and asked if i could go in his place. I told him that I wasn't sure he wanted to send *me* - because i'm not really any good - but that it sounded like a lot of fun. I think I actually played below average even for me, but Lee and I had a lot of fun and the other guys we were playing with were really good company as well.
It was a two-person-team, best-ball game, and, as a team, we ended up at +11 - which is much better than *I* ever play for 18 holes. Lee is pretty good and we played his shot more than half the time, but i was occasionally useful. I *did* make a crazy-hard birdie putt on a par 3 (mostly thanks to luck) and I had a few other key shots, but it was mostly Lee's game. Still, he's a blast to hang out with and, as i said, we had a lot of fun - which was really what it was about.

On saturday evening, almost right after the golf game, I ran my current d&d game. Since they just arrived in a new city and had a *ton* of housekeeping type stuff they wanted to do, added to the fact that I had/have quite a bit of setup material to get through, the session was a little slow and there wasn't much in the way of action or significant roleplaying. This was a little disappointing, but not terribly surprising. It was still an enjoyable evening hanging out with friends, and most of the stuff was necessary for the game on some level. Next session (whenever that is) should get them into some more 'meat' of the game, as it were.

This afternoon sheri & i went up to Beauty Spot. We've heard of it and even knew where it was for a while, but hadn't made it up there before today. The gravel road that takes you from the 395/rock creek rd up to the actual mountain top is pretty long and rough - and slightly nerve-wracking. I've been on worse though. The area itself is really pretty. I think later in the fall when there are fewer bugs and weeds (and some cooler temperatures), it would be a really nice place to spend an afternoon relaxing. I took some pictures of the area. If any of them turn out nice, i'm sure they'll get posted.

This evening, sheri & i walked down to sonic to get some slushes. I mention this particular event because, after we ordered our grape & watermelon creamslushes, we were asked (and i quote) 'would you like any mozzarella sticks to go with that?'. Now, i don't know what universe these people are from - but in *my* universe, fried cheese sticks do NOT, in any way, "go" with sweet, fruit-flavored, ice-cream slushes. At all. And, even if some people enjoy that combo, i have a hard time believing its so pervasive that asking everyone if they'd like some is a necessary course of action. I mean, i just can't see 'mozzarella sticks with creamslush' being anything like 'fries with hamburger'.

~PS

Or, you know, as real as I get.

Not too much has been going on here. Watching the grass grow. No, for real. Since i strained my calf muscle, I haven't mowed the yard - which is now really, really bad. My plan is to start tackling it later today. That's gonna be rough.

Sunday was our church picnic. I took a few great pictures of the munchkins on the playground. I'm still learning how to best shoot moving subjects - a lot of my shots are a little soft. Especially the ones of Claire. She doesn't stop moving. Anyway, it was fun. Oh, and I made lemon cheese bars for it (the first time by myself :)) which were a big hit with at least a few people. There were only two left.

Ginger, Sheri, Nick and I went out to the Elizabethton city pool on saturday. That was cool. Actually it was downright *cold*. There were only a dozen or so others in the water. I think i know why. After 5 or 10 minutes you got used to it though... ...if only because you were at that point numb and couldn't feel the cold. It was a good time though. The weather's been beautiful here: very mild for this time of year. Tomorrow's high is only 78 and the lows have been near-record.

On friday we had a fun gaming session. The party wrapped up what they had been doing in the dwarven ruin and have now traveled to the city of Madrid for more fun and mayhem. That game continues to be lots of fun.

Mahto's band had a practice on monday & I went to listen in. They sound pretty good for a highschool group. I think if they keep it together for a couple more years, they could be really good. They're actually playing at a 'Battle of the Bands' this thursday that we're gonna try to go to. That should be fun. Robb and I got to sit outside & play some guitar on monday as well. I really miss getting to play in a group. We talked for a while about trying to put something together at some point, but i think we'll need to find at least one more member.

Not too much else. Calendar's pretty blank for this month.

~PS

addendum: late last night i finally finished the graphic design for sheri's new blog - you can see it here.

No, really. The past week+ has been fairly uneventful. Despite this, I still have several things to do around the house that I haven't made it to yet. I feel like I've been busy, but I also don't feel like i've done/accomplished much - how does that work?

Sheri & I did have our 4th anniversary on thursday. :-) That was a good day. We went for a walk around sycamore shoals (cause it was such a nice day), and then went out to dinner. We then went to look for a movie to watch (we were going to go see Wall-E, but our theatre wasn't showing it at a time that worked well) and bought disney's The Sword in the Stone. I love cartoons.

I guess in terms of my hobbies' time ratio, gaming has gotten the lion's share lately. I've put a significant chunk of time into continuing to develop my new(ish)/experiemental system/setting but i'm still not happy with my progress - it seems to be going much too slowly. Hopefully I'll get a little more momentum soon. We had a last-minute game session last night for my surviving d&d group, which was quite fun - though it took the party about 3x longer to get to where they did than I figured it would.

Apart from that, i've been working on some large projects for work - even some on my own time. There's one in particular i really want to get done, but I never get enough time to spend on it. It's going to make things a lot easier on several of us once I do though.

Got to hang out with Sam a little on friday. That was cool. Haven't seen him much since he's been at Berea. Got to hear a couple new songs of his - they're pretty cool (as was to be expected). I've been sadly neglecting my music stuff lately. I did play a little yesterday and discovered my fingers are way out of shape. My callouses are still there, but my index finger cramps on bar chords pretty quickly. I need to start compiling ideas for a new album for next year's album recording month too. If i can write most of it beforehand, i might have a prayer of actually finishing one.

Tony & I (and Sheri, to some extent) have been working through the obsessive-collecting madness that is Lego Star Wars. There are minikit pieces on some of the levels i swear don't exist: i've gone back and forth through some of these levels like 12 times and they're still nowhere to be found. It's a fun and funny little game though.

Anyway, that's pretty much it.

~PS

Well, the week went by alright. It was pretty dull as well, but the weekend was good. It occurs to me i haven't had anything interesting to say in a while. Maybe i'm just being lazy. Anyway, just some notes on what's gone on...

Played Exalted on monday, which is always fun.

I ran one of my d&d games on friday - which was a great session (i'll get updates for you all soon).

Saturday we did some work around the house. Sheri potted some of her plants. We went to Erwin for a dinner thing. Stopped and took some photos of geese (including fuzzy babies) on the way (though i goofed and my camera settings weren't ideal).

Had church today, but didn't have to stay in Erwin since there was no choir practice. Instead we hung out with ginger and nick and played a AoEII (conquered the world). Also, we talked to our mom's since it's mothers' day.

Now it's late. I should head to bed soon.

~PS

Not too much to report or make note of, but here's the gist -

Had a great gaming session on saturday, which was lots of fun. I'm enjoying that game quite a bit.

Saturday night we went to the Midcity Grill in downtown JC. Hadn't been there before. The atmosphere is very relaxed and the food was great and cheap. We were scouting the place as a potential hangout for the Oots meetup we're planning for the end of june. The owner wasn't sure if he could handle our crowd (it's a small place and we may have 25 or 30 people), but we're hoping in addition to trying to come up with a plan 'B'.

Yesterday we went to the Milligan vs Team USA softball game - or, at least most of it. The cold + wind + rain eventually caused us to leave a little early. We all pretty much knew that Milligan was going to lose terribly to the olympic team, but i figure that wasn't really the point of it. I saw the point as seeing what Milligan could accomplish against them. I was told the final score was 24-0 in five innings, but Milligan did keep USA from scoring one inning and even managed to get one or two people on base.

Last night we had some tasty quasi-mexican for dinner and a sort of video game night with Ginger, Nick & Tony. There was Dragoon, Gauntlet, Contra, Lifeforce and Katamari. A good time was had by all. Oh, and Nick and I are heroes that saved the universe. Booya.

~PS

It's been a few minutes since i've written up a blog entry...

Been doing a lot of gaming - as it happens, every group i'm in or running (total = 4) has met or is meeting in this two-week span. It's been fun.

We had a cookout for Justin on saturday. He has successfully defended his masters thesis and, though he's not quite out of the woods, things are looking good. It seems none of his family or out-of-town friends are going to be around for his graduation - which is sad. We needed to celebrate, so we did.

Sunday (yesterday) was spent in Erwin - the first time we've had to do that in few weeks. It was a beautiful day and we went down to the Linear Trail (which follows the river). I took about 240ish pictures - granted, a lot of those were duplicates. I've developed the mantra that any shot worth taking is worth taking (at least) twice - just to make sure you get a good one. I created a gallery for the Erwin Linear Trail and put a few of the best shots in it. Speaking of taking pictures, I put a couple really nice ones I took at dusk at Milligan a while back in its gallery, and I also posted some pictures of the dogs (Ally and Abby) from saturday evening.

Tonight we have Robb's Exalted game, which I'm looking forward to. It's the only game I'm a player in. It's nice to be on the other side of the screen (as it were) once in a while... ...and it's also nice to take a break from d20.


On wednesday I'm planning to drive out to Durham, NC to visit Kevin and go to a Weakerthans concert - that should be pretty sweet. :)


~PS

or "i am a geek, part XXVI"

I like dice. I like boxes. I can be a little obsessive/compulsive about organizing certain things (certain things. Other things I couldn't care less about. See: my office closet).

So, after a tip from Sheri's mom, I went to the fishing section at wal-mart (you can see why i needed the tip - why else would I be there?) and got a new dice/pencil/marker container. Some people apparently call it a 'tackle box'.

This $4 box can neatly separate all my dice by type (or color, or texture i suppose - though that would be somewhat less useful) in adjustable compartments and also has room to hold my dry-erase markers and pencils. Point is, it keeps all my 'loose' gaming stuff together, making it a lot easier to carry or pack into a bag with books, etc.

So yeah, I think it's pretty cool. I thought I'd post it up here to pass along the idea in case anyone else likes it. Oh, and because it was another thing to take a picture of and post on my site - cause that's sort of an end in itself these days. ;-)

~PS

Just a few random excerpts from my life this last week:

Took Ally to the vet on wednesday; made an appointment to get her spayed. That's supposed to happen on the 24th. By all accounts, she's in good health and very cute. :)

Had a game on thursday; got to use a clever riddle in a situation that actually made sense in-game. Didn't kill anyone.

Ginger made us chicken fajitas on friday and we played some carcassonne and mario kart. Much fun; very tasty.

Saturday, Sheri and I talked some about some future possible home improvement projects, went and bought flower seeds, ate chili and made Nick watch The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Abridged. It had been a long time since I'd seen it, and it made me laugh. :)

Yesterday was the start of DST. We lost an hour, but I'm glad that there's still plenty of daylight left after work. As the days warm and lengthen, I'll have more and more time to be able to shoot outside. Looking forward to this.

We also had the usual church stuff - which we were on time for because we remembered said DST stuff. I played Brave Saint Saturn's "Estrella" for the special - and I think it sounded really good. Don't think I've ever played a song kapo'd that high (7th!).

After Sheri's usual choir practice, we met up with Dennis (aka TheGreatJabu from the OotS forum). Robb & Edie came over as well and the group of us chatted about random stuff for most of the evening. After our Bored Meetings tonight, we went to Robb & Edie's house to hang out with Dennis (before he leaves town tomorrow) by playing some Killer Bunnies. Dennis seems to be a great guy, and meshes with out little group quite well in terms of personality. If his interview with ETSU's psych. doctorate program went well enough, he may even be moving to town. That would be pretty cool.

Anyway, that's about it for now.

~PS

Given my principle hobbies, I think this deserves a mention on my site.

I have just discovered that Gary Gygax - co-creator of D&D, founder of GenCon, and writer of more games/systems, books, adventures, etc than can quickly be counted - has died today at age 69. Like many gamers I'm sure, I'm sad that I never got to meet someone who had such a profound effect on fantasy roleplaying (more or less starting it).

He will be missed, but his legacy will live on.

~PS

It's been about a week since my last blog post, so I guess it's that time again. Not too much interesting going on. Not to talk about anyway.

Last saturday Rucht, having decided that way too many of us gamers had never seen the movie Conan the Barbarian, had a bunch of us over for a viewing of the very old and cheesy film. Apparently we've been initiated now. We did have a good time playing with the plastic swords he got for the occasion, eating some tasty food, playing an epic game of munchkin and making another (failed) attempt at finishing a game of Arkham Horror. Oh, and because i'd seen that movie, I realized last night that James Earl Jones is also in Dr. Strangelove. Weird.

Sunday, I continued my longest currently-running campaign (18 sessions now, started a year ago last october). I love that game. It's so much different than most rp games.

I've been continuing to work on my RPM project. I'd hoped to be a bit further than I am, and it's beginning to look like I'm not going to finish. We've now reached the half-way point, and I've only got 2 songs down. I wrote about 1.5 more last night, but I haven't even started recording them yet. Perhaps tonight while sheri's at choir practice. I'm also discovering this project to be more a 'proof of concept' than an actual finished product. I'm way too picky to settle for what's coming out so far. Still, it's been most enlightening and enjoyable.

Also, I've posted to the gallery a few more pics i've taken recently. A couple more cute pictures of Ally (apparently one of my favorite subjects)(Ears!) and a few scenery pics - including a decent moon shot and a killer sunset sky. I'm looking forward to the weather warming up enough to actually go out to some different places to shoot.

~PS

The last week has been pretty much "more of the same".

I did get to play golf with Joe last wednesday, though. It was about 60 here, and a beautiful day to be out on the course. Did pretty well (for me) too - par'd 3 holes, made some pretty amazing (lucky) puts, and generally we had a good time. Hopefully we'll have some more nice days to play.

I got to play/run a couple rpg's too. My thursday group is well on their way, and Robb's game (though it's losing players) continues to be a lot of fun.

Apart from that, there's pretty much just work and church stuff - the latter involving preparing for all the christmas...stuff.

~PS

So i guess when my dad points out that i haven't put up a blog post in about two weeks, I must be slacking a little. We were talking on the phone last night about another possible web project, but I'll talk more on that later when/if it pans out.

We've been fairly busy the last couple of weeks, but there's really not much to talk about.

We did go to our church's 'Trunk or Treat' thing on halloween (think: give candy out from trunks of cars in the church parking lot), which was pretty amusing. I think the best costume I saw was this little girl dressed up as Raggedy Anne. Followed closely by this boy as a pirate - complete with mustache the hung down to his chest. Those two were very well done outfits amongst the majority of walmart suits. Alas that I was unable to get pictures of them - partly because i felt a little odd taking pictures of other people's kids, and partly due to the limitations of our camera (recycle time & low-light capability (I hate flash). Talking of which, I've been looking at a lot of digital SLR's and lenses lately and reading a lot about what's good and what's not and learning a bit more about photography in general. Pretty fascinating. But, I digress...). After that, we went over to Ginger's place an hung out with some friends there for a while - which is always fun.

Apart from that, we've done some gaming (though not on "world-wide d&d day" - which was last saturday. a friend of mine was running some stuff at a local comic shop, but i didn't make it out. Other things going on. It was coolest a few years ago on the 30th anniversary anyway... but i digress again...), hung out a little at Ginger's church's coffeehouse, managed to remember the time change from DST and went to our church thanksgiving dinner. I think that pretty much brings us up to speed.

As far as upcoming events, I have 2-3(!) games this weekend (running 2, maybe playing 1), possibly swinging by Edie's birthday party, church's oh-so-exciting committee & board meetings on monday, planning to (finally) have Bart & Sarah Price (youth minister & his wife) over for dinner on tuesday, celebrating Ginger's birthday (a bit early) on wednesday and probably running another game on thursday. Keeping busy.

Don't think i've given any update/info on this point either: Ally has so far been inside for a little over two weeks. Thus far, there have been only one two "accidents" (that were probably my fault) and one case of negligible property damage (when she accidentally pulled my trackball off my desk and one of the buttons cracked. Still works though.). She seems a lot happier and less frantic (except at breakfast time) in here. Plus she keeps me company while Sheri's at work.

~PS

I've had quite a bit of fun the last few days.

On friday I built the framework for a sort of work side-project. I'm pretty excited about this one - it'll be really cool, I think. Yes, this counts as "fun". I'm a geek like that.

On friday night we went to the coffeehouse at Ginger's church. Not much was going on, but it was cool just to hang out and talk to people. I watched some friends play Go. Interesting little board game. Some of them were also talking about the world traveling they'd done. I kinda wish I had been / could go to some cool places like that...

On saturday our dog Ally got the bath she needed. She wasn't such a fan, but she's a good little beagle and so it wasn't a terribly difficult task - even by myself. After that Sheri and I walked her around the backyard for a bit and sat in the shade (of our neighbor's tree) for a while. It was a beautiful afternoon.

On saturday night we continued and wrapped up a d&d game I'd been running for a few sessions. I think it went pretty well. I've now started some work on the two new games I'm starting. With the Liimar game and Robb's Exalted (see below), this makes 4 rpg's I'm in or running. I think I'm insane. It's a fun insane, but still...

On sunday, we went to church in Erwin as usual. I'm very glad that we have a wireless net connection at the church now - since we're kinda stuck there all day. I spent most of sunday afternoon working on putting the finishing touches on the project I mentioned working on on friday. Very excited about that. Sheri was working on choir stuff. We did go outside and play a couple of games of Kubb (which happened to be in the jeep), however.

Sunday night was also the 'all-sing' - where the area churches get together and sing together and for each other. It's not my favorite thing in the world, but Sheri's choir sounded pretty good. Plus we got to hang out with people and have snacks after.

On sunday night my mom came back through from visiting my sister in SC. I'm always glad to see family. Don't see them much since they're all quite far away.

On monday morning, mom and I went out and played 9 holes at Pine Oaks Golf Course. That was lots of fun. Beautiful morning. I played better than I think I ever have - which was pretty impressive considering it had been almost exactly 4 months since I'd played - and I played terribly that day. As it turns out, I think my grip was most of the problem. A simple tip that mom happened to mention that she saw on her video completely transformed my game. I've never had a piece of technique make such a difference. I birdied a hole for the first time ever, and I par'd the 8th and 9th. Total score for the round was 48. I could have dropped a couple strokes if i hadn't made a few chipping/putting mistakes. More than that though, my shots just felt better - more solid. Of course now I'm setting myself up to do terribly next time, since I'll be expecting much more than I was yesterday...

I also thought about how lucky I was that I have a job where I can just kinda take time off to hang out with my family if they happen to come through.

On monday (last) night, we finally got to play Robb's Exalted game. I had a lot of fun. It's a pretty interesting premise and system. Plus I get to play a shapeshifter. I have a soft spot for shapeshifters. Also, there are some people in that group that I haven't gamed with in years. I'm looking forward to continuing this one.

So yeah... ...the rest of my week looks pretty boring compared to the last several days...

~PS

It never fails: If I eat peanut butter and jelly, i get jelly all over my face.

It is inevitable.

So this week was pretty ok. Same as usual for the most part. Calendar was pretty blank. I'm starting to get some of the big projects for work out of the way. At least until i get the next one.

Made an origami owl last night. That was pretty fun. I tried making a flying stork too, but i couldn't figure out the starting point (the book was less than great as an instructional device).

Still trying to sort out my gaming schedule for the upcoming games - trying to figure out how much my plate can hold.

Still wanting to go out and take some pictures with ginger's spiffy camera. She said she'd get some film for her other camera, let me use her digital and we could go around, take pictures and hopefully teach me some stuff. Preferably some day when it's not too hot/humid/raining/etc.

~PS

A quick '"here's what went on" entry, because I have another to post -

This week's been pretty good, all things told. Pretty busy work week - working on a big project.

Sheri started her new job friday and survived her first day. Yay on both counts! :-)

Friday night we had another good gaming session. I'm reallying enjoying this particular game. It's intended to be short and contained, but I like the fact that I had almost all of the scenrio mapped out ahead of time and it's a pretty good story for a game.

Saturday we went on a picnic to Sycamore Shoals and hiked around a bit after.

Today we went out on Boone lake on a pontoon boat with some people from church - spent the day tubing and swimming and generally having a good time. Even saw some people and boats in piratety garb!

~PS

...which is almost over. Doesn't seem like it should be this late already.

So the summer has been pretty good. Pretty busy in places. Schedules of people have tended to be less than predictable as well. I mean more than usual.

Not enough gaming went on this summer - perhaps the slowest on record since graduation - i'm not sure. We've got a couple few sessions together, but nothing major. I have been working on quite a bit of gaming stuff, however.

I've also been continuing work on my recording project again recently - which tends to go in spurts. Before this last week I hadn't touched it in at least a month, maybe more. I'm kinda stuck on the words to the song I'm working on atm.

I am further convinced we need a riding mower. That grass just gets too tall too fast for my poor little push mower. It's not so much the pushing I don't like, it's the must-stop-every-five-feet-to-keep-the-mower-from-dying that annoys me. I suppose I could merely upgrade the pushmower to something a bit more heavy duty, but i'm not sure what i'd need or how much of a help it would actually be.

Sheri starts her new job at Milligan this week. :-) That'll be great. She'll actually be able to do stuff in the evenings now instead of working 2-11pm (the 'no life' shift).

My job is going pretty well - though we're about to be very busy. Getting a couple few large projects, though I am happy the boss-man turned one of them down. It would have been quite a bit of money for the business, but it would have been very difficult and resource consuming. He decided it just wasn't worth it, and I agree.

Also on the subject of work, Andy's doing a great job with us. I've been really impressed with his graphic work. I mean, he went to school for that, but he seems to have a lot of innate talent as well.

We've also had a couple of cool family visits this summer. Speaking of, Jamie sent me an email a while back saying she might be able to come visit this month, but I haven't heard from her since... ...that would be cool. She even promised to give Ally a bath. heh.

~PS

It's been a while since there's been a blog.

I'm currentlly sitting upstairs at our church in the youth room on the couch. They finally got a DSL connection here, and I have the wireless key.

It's kind of odd to be hanging out here, writing a blog and seeing my office over in the sushi-cam. Odd in a cool way, though. Heh.

Now, if only I had a macbook, this would be even sweeter.

Not much has been going on lately, actually (hence, the bloglessness). Work's been pretty busy/hectic. We've been pretty impressed with Andy's work though. We just have a lot of big development projects coming in. Some I'm excited about; some not so much.

My parents came by a few weekends ago on their way down to Myrtle Beach. They met us over at Ginger's place and played Apples to Apples with us for a while. Then we went back to the Igloo and talked for a bit. Saturday morning, dad replaced the dash in my jeep (the speedometer was broken). Yeah, he's in here for all of 12 hours, and he manages to fix something. He's cool like that.

I've been working quite a bit on my d20 campaign setting for Liimar. It's been a pretty fun, yet challeneging experience, because there's so many mechanics i've decided to play with. I've changed my mind about how I want most of the stuff to work about 16 times. I can't wait to get enough of it done so that I can try some more on my guinea p- ...er...i mean "players"... ...so that I can change how it works a dozen or so more times.

Got to meet another, local gamer the other night. Name's Nick. He seems pretty cool - he's already made the quote list even. We'll have to put something together to play sometime soon.

~PS

This last weekend was a blast. Those of us here in Johnson City, TN who are members of the GitP Forums all got together and also hosted several out-of-state members for the two-fold purpose of getting to meet each other in person and having a lot of fun.

I would say our mission was a complete success.

Sadly, not everyone who wanted to was able to come, but those of us who were present had an awesome time.

The meetup started friday night as we converged upon Llama's apartment. I believe Jerry was the first to arrive. Amanda and Ginger had also arrived by the time I got there around 8:00pm. Justin (who I'm told is Lord Xerxes on the board, but whom I've not actually encountered there) was also around, as it was his house too.
We tried to play a game of Kubb, but it got called on account of lightening. We had just begun a game of Apples to Apples when Ron arrived, so we dealt him in.
After some games and a run to the grocery store for refreshing beverages, some of our company departed to Ging's place for the evening. Llama was trying valiantly to stay awake on the couch while me & Jerry talked about random stuff until about 3am when Dave finally arrived.

On saturday, we went over to Ginger's place for breakfast around 10am for breakfast. From there, we went over to the Greenwood Challenge Course to use their little pavilion and field for some grilling out and playing Kubb. There we met up with Robb (who got the place for us), Edie and Ken. We spent the afternoon playing Kubb, eating grilled goodness and generally having a good time. I took a lot of pictures (see the gallery) with Ginger's spiffy camera. I kinda want one of those.

After we left our outdoor meeting location, we proceeded to Ginger's church's basement (where the Just Coffee coffeehouse is) for the evening where some of the group played the OotS board game and a couple played some other board games. Sheri, Llama, Ron and I played a D&D one-shot I'd made up a while back. It was pretty fun.

After church on Sunday, we met up with the group here where we did a little more grilling (with our spiffy new gas grill!) and hung out and talked until people needed to leave.

All in all, it was one of the coolest things I've done. :-) I am so looking forward to doing it again. Like I said after meeting Ceika and the Hippie (the first time), it was so cool to get to meet people from other states you'd only talked to online - especially when they are so much fun to hang out with.

~PS

We were out earlier today, running some errands, etc. We had gone into walmart to pick up a couple of random things.

At the jewelry counter, I saw a cardstock sign detailing the birthstones for the 12 months. Signs like this are fairly common at jewelry counters and generally are cheesy or uninteresting (usually both), but I was waiting on Sheri and there wasn't much else interesting in the area either.

It was then that I happened to read the entry for December (mine & sheri's birth month). According to this particular sign, ("According to Legend") the Blue Topaz has the following abilities:

- Dispels enchantments
- Increases the wearer's strength
- Makes wearer invisible in times of emergency
- Changes color in the presence of poisoned food or drink

It actually reads like an entry from the Dungeon Master's Guide - and a pretty cool one at that. I also noted that none of the other months were anything like that - apart from November (i think), which was said to protect against snake bites.

~PS

....been goin' on....

April 25th, for those of you who don't know, was World Penguin Day. :)

Friday was the last Just Coffee for the year. We had some fun hanging out and playing some music. I got to play with a marimba-like instrument and also I got to try playing violin. I can fake my way through 'Twinkle, Twinkle' - which I find pretty impressive since I'd never picked up the instrument before. I really want to learn now though.

We've got to game quite a bit lately. The Liimar (experimental campaign) is progressing rather nicely and continues to be lots of fun. I brought my currently running campaign to a close on saturday. That gives me a bit of a sense of accomplishment. I've been working on future games quite a bit as well.

We had a bit of a lawn-game party before the gaming commenced. It was quite fun, despite being delayed by the weather.

I went to the dentist for the first time in several years today. My teeth have several problems to fix, but it wasn't any worse than I expected - and in some ways, better. We get to start that mess next thursday...

I think that's about it for now...

Further updates as events warrant...

~PS

Lawn games are fun. Particularly when you have a lawn to play them on.

Tony finally taught us to play Kubb last week. It's a fun little lawn game of 'throw the block, throw the stick'. On wednesday, we played an augmented version - involving munchkins running through the field whilst playing. The object then became 'throw the ball, throw the stick, miss the munchkin'. Anyway, by saturday, 7 new people had been introduced to this particular swedish lawn game.

On saturday we taught tony how to play Bocce - since he'd somehow managed to escape playing that game with us to that point. We had fun with that one on our hilly and lumpy backyard.

Other than lawn game mayhem, we had some other fun times this weekend. A bunch of us got together at Mike & Steph's on friday to play Wii and generally just hang out. That was fun.

On sunday we got to do a little gaming. That's always fun - particularly this game, since all the players do such a good job roleplaying these somewhat odd PC's.

Oh, also I got the backyard and a good chunk of the front yard mowed (again). I've also procured a weed eater that I may smite down the tall grass in the ditch on the edge of our lawn sometime soon.

~PS

So I got to have lunch with Ken today. (aka Raldor, aka WiseTurtle)

It's always interesting to spend some time hanging out with someone you used to see pretty regularly but (for whatever reason) haven't seen in a few years.

So we talked about work and OoTS and friends and gaming over some Funny Name sandwiches. It was really cool. I'm looking forward to him coming to game with us. It's been a while...

~PS

A mere 19 hours after its ignition switch broke in the lowes parking lot, my jeep was up and running again - thanks to my jeep manual, a local junk yard, some special tools and the tremendous driving efforts of our friend ginger.

So, once again, we have a car to drive. Sheri's is still in the shop, awaiting some diagnosis.

Despite the jeep's crisis, we still had our game on saturday (a bit late). It was a good session.

Today we didn't have to stay in erwin. Instead, we came back here and put the first coat of paint on the hallway. It's looking pretty darn good.

After the painting, we did NOT watch the superbowl. Seems none of us care much about it. Imagine that.

Instead, we had some nachos with cheese/meat/tomato dip (recipe ala kevin) for dinner and played some serious mario kart. We have proven that Sheri makes the meanest yoshi ever.

~PS

Another weekend came and went. It was a pretty good one.

On friday and saturday sheri and I talked about some stuff for the house and decided that I'll start working on the hallway this week. I became much more interested in the project when we decided not to paint the hallway white. White is boring. The first step is to repair a couple cracks and smooth out the drywall. I'll be photo-documenting it and i'll try to put some pictures up as I go - or at least when it's done.

Kevin was in town this weekend too. It's always nice to get to hang out with out-of-town friends for a bit.

Saturday night we all took tony to Misaki's (japanese hibachi steakhouse place) for his 25th birthday. I've decided I like Misaki's pretty well - despite the fact that I don't like chinese much and I haven't been a fan of any eastern food in the past. It was tasty.

We gave tony a llama calendar and ginger gave him a shirt that says 'the penguin made me do it'. Appropriate on so many levels.

Last night we finally got to continue one of my d&d games that's been on hold for a while. We had a good session.

I think a couple more quotes got added to 'the list' this week too.

~PS

Just so you all know, today is Penguin Awareness Day. This was *not* going unmentioned.

In other news, gas prices have finally dropped below $2 here in east TN. As per my previous agreement with the fuel companies, I will now cease complaining about the high price of gasoline until it is once again above $2.

Congrats to one Tony "Llama" for having successfully conquered Ape Escape 3 earlier this week. Catching 142 monkeys is no small task.

Game night at the coffeehouse last night was fun - but that was the most drawn-out game of Shadows over Camelot I've ever not finished. One of the guys that was playing with us heard us talking and said we should have a d&d night at the coffeehouse. This amuses me.

Lastly, I've been playing my new guitar a lot. My fingers aren't used to it, but it's been lots of fun. I think I need to retire my old effects pedal though. If I have enough money relatively soon I think I'll by a Boss EQ pedal so I can ditch the thing.

~PS

It was a good weekend.

Friday was Sheri's birthday. I took her out to dinner and then we, llama and the EP drove out to see the Speedway in Lights. That was fun.

Continuing their past tradition, ging and tony got sheri the 3rd Mario Party game. I gave her a dvd of White Christmas and a new Ticket To Ride game - which is pretty fun.

Saturday we had a choir rehearsal and then we returned and I got to run my d&d game for the last time for the year. (Which gives me PLENTY of time to come up with the trials that await the party in the tunnels outside Fissure. Cue maniacal laughter.)

Sunday we spent in Erwin as usual, though, unlike usual, we were invited to lunch at Shelton & Gale's (along with Craig and Meghan), which was very enjoyable.

Nothing overly interesting or exciting or 'blog worthy', but I feel pretty good this monday morning.

~PS

Well, yesterday evening was both more interesting than it could have been and less.

Because this is our first year in this house, we had no idea if we'd get any trick-or-treaters or not. Due to a certain incident last year wherein we were caught completely unawares, we decided to stock up on candy just to be safe - which we began snacking on rather early in the evening.

Ginger and Tony also came over for a bit, and we played a game of Munchkin Bites - which was the most halloween-related game we could come up with.

We only had one trick-or-treater, and she was solicited. Mike & Steph brought katie over (dressed as supergirl) to our place for a couple hours. She spent that time working off some of her sugar high by running around aimlessly and playing with us.

All in all, the night was lots of fun.

~PS

This is Abby Grace. When asked about me by Ginger, she has said that I am:
A) Not scary.
B) Not weird.
C) Sam.

Apparently I am considered to be Sam because I also play guitar. I love little kids. They're so cute. Abby in particular. I'm kinda bummed now that they're going to a different church and I don't get to see them every week. We did get to see them today, however.

Today was our church picnic. Despite the dreariness of parts of the day, it was a lot of fun. Sam and I got in some good practice time, we all got to swim (in very cold water), had good food, and played a 2 hour game of Purple Ball. We are, in fact, the best Purple Ball players in East Tennessee.

The rest of this weekend has been pretty good too. Warren (boss-man) took me & Brandon out for breakfast on friday. Friday night we spent with Ginger and Tony playing mario party.

Saturday, my game (finally) continued as The Party attempted not to get themselves killed by some eel-people and discover why , how and by whom an underground town had been partially flooded. Fun and mayhem.

I've also been catching up with some out-of-state friends I haven't heard from in a while. I came across at least 3 people I hadn't emailed in ages when I imported my address book to my mac. It's been cool.

~PS

On friday afternoon, for the first time ever, I did something to fix a car: That is, i replaced the ignition module on sheri's car. Myself. Considering I know only slightly more about cars than i know about nueclear physics, i'm darn proud of this.

On saturday we had a pretty good gaming session. Not killing the party == pretty good. After the game, some people left, some people stayed, some people showed up. We had an interesting conversation involving everything from comedy shows to politics to psychology. Afterward, sheri and i made a midnight run to walmart for sweet potatoes.

Sunday was Easter. We went to ginger's house for lunch. We == me, sheri, tony, eric and justin. We ate lots of fried chicken and played some ninja burger, but eventually ginger got tired and my allergies were acting all crazy, so the party disbanded a bit earlier than it otherwise might have.

Later sunday evening, ginger and justin came over and the four of us played a couple games of Age of Empires 2 - world conquering at its finest. Its pretty cool that i have friends who can bring laptops over and lan game on a whim.

There were some other things i wanted to include in this blog, but i don't remember what they were. They were probably some funny quotes or something. Alas.

~PS

I have just been informed. It is fun times. I've been waiting for them to come in for a over a week now - and, by all accounts, they should have been here a few days ago, but oh well.

So yeah, yay for friends who can get me cool-yet-ridiculously-over-priced gaming books for a discount. Steve, you're my hero. I <3 U.

It occurs to me that many people would probably like to spend less money on their books. That's all well and good, but i'd rather spend the same amount of money and get more books. I guess i'm greedy like that. Or maniacle. Either one, really.

So, if that didn't make any sense to you, i'll explain a little. My gaming library is about to be increased by 6 nifty-cool books. 3 of which are for me to use when subjecting players to inhospitable climates. The other 3 are more for the players, who can use them for additional aid in character creation. Not that there aren't way too many cool options out there already (i was just discussing this with steve, actually).

~PS

...and here i was just getting on to Sam for shirking his 'net duties.

So it's been a minute or two since i've blogged. Maybe it's because i have nothing to say.

Or maybe it's because my life is so full and exciting i haven't had time to blog in the last week and a half.

Yeah, i wasn't buying that either.

The last week+ has been good though. Nothing incredibly blog-worthy, but good.

We didn't go to the coffeehouse this last week (*gasp*). I think we were all kinda burned out on it - though i probably wouldn't have realized it if ginger hadn't said something. We did have a good time going out to Cootie Brown's and wandering about JC before deciding we were all too tired to stay up much past 10:30.

Saturday we had a good game. My group seems to be a steady(ish) 6 players again. This makes me happy. It had shrunk uncomfortably low there for a while. I really like this hobby, so much so that i've ordered 6 more books. I'm fairly sure i'm not obsessed with it, but i do spend a good amount of time working on game-related ideas and projects (this website is about 50% game related) and i really like the idea that i can run a game that my friends enjoy and look forward to. Over all, i think it's the social aspect of the game that i like most.

After the game, some of us went out for pizza and then played some Mario Party 2. Fun times. ...though, if i'd have won half of the mini-games i won in our practice run-throughs, i'd have kicked much more butt.

Yesterday (Sunday) we spent in Erwin, as usual. Got to have some band practice. Looks like our praise band has acquired a bass player, which frees me up to play guitar and sing. I did enjoy playing bass though...

~PS

It was a pretty good weekend - if a little short.

Saturday we had a good game. Fun times & mayhem.

Yesterday (Sunday) our praise band led worship. So far all direct comments to us - and we've had quite a few - have been exceptionally positive, though there are a couple people we suspect weren't too thrilled (like the one who tried to cancel church due to the weather). Still, it was cool, and we all know there's just no pleasing some people.

Yesterday afternoon, Sheri & I were invited over to our minister's house for the afternoon. They were having the youth and a bunch of people over that evening anyway, and it's always cold in the church after everyone leaves. So we hung out, played with their kids and talked with them.

I actually found out that Joel, our minister, used to play a little d&d back in the 80's, when everyone thought it was satanic (hehe). He said he never really got too into it (he said the math was his real problem. thac0 and all.), but he had some friends who really liked to play so he joined in. He said he was always the guy who got killed first - and that he always had trouble figuring out whether he was dead.

Later that evening, a bunch of people, including but not limited to the youth group, came over to their house to watch some football game (hehe). Joel was asking everyone who they wanted to win. I told him i voted for the Seahawks because they had the cooler name. I was not the only one to use such pointless forumlas to determine preference either.

I didn't pay much attention to the game anyway as me, Sam and a couple others were playing Dread Pirate - and we actually finished a game. I'd played the game several times before, but we'd never finished one. Despite my bad luck at the beginning, I actually ended up winning. Not only that, but I successfully took the Dread Pirate flag from the current holder (with the help of +5 (!) from cards i had) and managed to hold it until the end of the game, through at least 4 attacks. Truly, it was my finest hour on the high seas. okimdone.

After that, we returned here to the Rabbit Hole where i fixed the first hardware problem i've had with this computer : a loud, strange noise it was making, which turned out to be the video card's fan that had become incredibly dusty (despide the fact that it sits in the case upside down) and was making a crap load of noise.

~PS

So i've discovered that being a regular rp GM has given me some sort of complex.

Last friday at the coffeehouse, Sam brought a new board game we'd been wanting to play - Dread Pirate. It's a fun little game, but for some reason, it just wasn't enough. Maybe it was because we were supposed to have had an rp session that night that was called because one of the players couldn't make it. I was already in the GM-use-the-rules-as-you-like mode.

Really, all Sam & I did was tweak a couple of the rules for realism - something i do all the time while GM-ing, but it's not something normal* people generally do when playing board games.

Since that time, Sam & I have thought up several other variations on the game and have grand schemes as to how involved this game could possibly get.

*This topic seems to be recurring - e.g., the Chicken Nugget Thesis and Photoshop Toast v1.0

~PS

This afternoon, Sheri and I went out to eat with Ginger and Kevin (who's been in town this weekend). We had a great time, but when it came time to pay and leave, it got a little confusing.

We were each given a seperate ticket. Kevin had a $15 gift card to be applied to the total bill, and then we would split the rest. I asked how much Sheri & I's were. Kevin said it was something like $13 and $9, but that when he took the $15 dollars off from the gift card, we all had a $40 ticket to split. I gave him a $20, but was confused. It's sunday. I don't want to do math.

Then Ginger looks at me and begins to explain:

"Look, we got hit for 53 points of damage. The gift card gives us DR 15..."

Suddenly it was all clear...

~PS

It may seem like i have been neglecting the site in general and my blog specifically. The first part is completely untrue, but sadly the second is mostly factual.

Over the last several weeks, i've been rebuilding my website from scratch, fixing some things i didn't like, and adding some features i'd always wanted to. After about a week and a half of labor, Penguinsushi.com version 4.0 is up and running. I'm really happy with this new site and how it works - though it may take a little getting used to for some.

Aside from the web development (for work and for fun), the last couple of weeks have had some coolness in them that i haven't got around to talking about until now.

As you've probably already seen, there are now pictures up from the costume party. Yeah. Dressing up as a giant penguin is great fun. I think i was the entertainment for the evening...at the very least, i had the goofiest costume.

We finally started the second d&d campaign with Eric & Cory last week. I thought it went pretty well. I'm still not sure how much Cory wants to play, but she didn't seem actively bored and seemed to at least enjoy goofing off with us.

Last week we had an open mic at the coffeehouse again. I left my tuner on the piano again. It was a lot of fun though. Sam & I played one of my songs together - mostly because he insisted i play it, and i insisted that i wasn't going to unless he played it with me. I also played a new song i had written called "I think you're reading too much into this." I was very happy with how it sounded, though it's a sort of intense song, and playing it about exhausted me. Anyone who says singing and playing guitar isn't physically exertive has never done it.

also, my parents came down to visit this last weekend. That was cool, i hadn't got to see them since july. It was a short visit, but it was nice.

~PS

well, we did it. not much too soon either. the mystery puzzle has been finished (save for the two missing pieces) and solved. heh. it was great fun. if you've never worked on a puzzle that you don't know what it looks like with at least 3 other people, i highly recommend it. Pictures of it are posted here.

saturday was a bit more chaotic. i really wanted to game, but sheri had a concert that night, and llama had to work during the day. plus eric and cory were out of town. so, no game. alas.

anyway, ginger and i met tony at dice. he was playing a very long game of killer bunnies. while we waited for him, we decided to walk down to quiznos to get some dinner. (she had been saying 'feed the penguin').

this is where i discovered something, for the second time: apparently bacon, lettuce and tomato are no longer an acceptable combination of sandwich items in and of themselves. Allow me to briefly flashback.

I have always been a fan of blt's. I have ordered them at lots of different sandwich places and, until recently, never had the slightest problem. A month or two ago, sheri and i went to subway in erwin. There, i had a conversation with the employee on duty:

me: "hi, i'd like a foot-long blt sub"
guy (a bit rude): "we don't have blt's, only bmt's."
me: "you mean to tell me you, in fact, have bacon, lettuce and tomato, but you can't put them all together on a sandwhich for me? I don't really care how you charge me for it, i just like blts."

...somewhat reluctantly, he relented and made me a rather mediocre blt. having never encountered this before, and fully aware that i was in a sort of back-woods TN town, i figured it was an isolated incident - which it was... ...until last night, when ginger and i went to quiznos.

that encounter went something like this:

me: "yeah, i'd like a regular blt sub"
guy: "well...we don't really have that on the menu..."
me: "well, how about this? make me a 'classic club' and hold the turkey, ham and cheddar."
guy: "uhm..."
me: "it's...pretty much the same thing, man"
guy: "oh, ok".

this guy was much nicer than the first guy, but, nevertheless, it seems that sandwich shops no longer acknowledge the existence of my sandwich of choice. LISTEN TO ME! CLAIMING IT DOESN'T EXIST WON'T MAKE THE BACON-LETTUCE-TOMATOY GOODNESS GO AWAY! LONG LIVE THE KING OF ALL SANDWICHES!!!

okimdone.

after that, we came back and played some carcassonne (all your base are belong to meee!!!) and ticket to ride.

today, we had the berea college chamber singers at church this morning - they're really good. Sam's sister Erin is one of the members. It should be noted that results the imfamous Rachel vs. Erin debates are as yet undeclared, but I decided i liked the name 'Erin' better, and, as a matter of fact, she told me she shared that opinion.

in other news, sheri and i just finished watching cinderella and the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. it was an odd combination, but hey... ...so are we?

so long, and thanks for all the fish

~PS

as mentioned in the forum already, i am now the (proud?) owner of a full-body penguin costume. :) This signifies a level of penguin-ness i previously would not have thought possible. Apparently there was a conspiracy involving several friends, acquaintances and game store owners to get me this thing.

i still want a cloak.

we didn't really have an open mic at the coffeehouse like we were supposed to friday night, but that's mostly because nobody else came to play anything. It was ok though, we ended up working a mystery puzzle for most of the evening. It is a very interesting thing to work on a puzzle with 4 other people when none of you know what the picture looks like.

saturday evening sheri, eric and i taught cory a little about d&d and roleplaying in general. I'm not sure how much she really wants to play, but apparently she's going to give it a try, which is cool. Teaching new people about the game is always an interesting experience. Still, you really can't get a feel for it by talking about it, you just gotta play it.

in other news, the wallace and gromit movie is out, and i need to see it. really.

~PS

the last week has been, for the most part, uneventful. we've been enjoying the new games we got last weekend and are planning on taking them with us. We had a good rp session on monday. No one got turned to stone by the basilisk. that was good. Steve finally was able to start his epic game this week. That was fun. Epic druidy goodness. There was some other stuff this week that was rather amusing, but i've forgotten most of it. I do remember something about me inventing a metric time system where the base unit is called a 'faffle'.

So anyway... ...i'll be gone for about a week as sheri and i are taking a trip out to see her family in flippin' arkansas. (Yes, the name of the town is actually Flippin.) Be good while i'm gone.

~PS

so last night, sheri was really wanting to try something different for dinner. after digging though a couple of cook books and making a grocery list, we went to Dice. wait. that probably doesn't make any sense. allow me to digress:

as of about a week ago, sheri and i have been thinking we should get Carcassone, but we, as of friday, hadn't yet gone to get it - mostly because sheri's all responsible and stuff and said we should get tires for her car first (which she got yesterday)... ...even though llama pointed out that we couldn't all play with her new tires. (this did lead to a short tangent that involved rolling tires and bowling balls down milligan highway, but that's not important now)
ANYWAY: having no real plans for friday night, and thinking it sounded like fun, we decided to finally go buy the game.

After getting our new game, we went to the grocery and discovered cool little gummy penguins called peng-yums and spent way too much time looking for minced garlic. After that, we came back and made chicken kiev with cheese....more or less.
We actually discovered we needed chicken breast halves and...well...have you ever tried to slice a chicken breast in half laterally? ...After that adventure, we decided we were only going to make 2 instead of the 4 the recipe called for...even though we had already done everything else for 4. Next, we discovered we had little flour bugs in our flour...so we had to make due with what little flour we had in a jar. We also realized that, according to a part of the recipe we obviously did not closely examine, it was supposed to chill for 1-24 hours before you bake it - but, being that it was 9:30pm and sheri was starving, we pretty much nixed that and stuck it in the freezer for about 10 minutes.
Amazingly, it turned out pretty good...we figure if we actually make it right next time, it could be pretty awesome.

~PS

It was a good weekend. The game friday night went pretty well, even though we only had 4 party members of a possible 7 or so.

saturday evening we went to dice to play pirate's cove - though we didn't actually play that game. by the time we all got there, two games were already going and we weren't going to have time to start a new one... ...so we played carcassonne instead - which, unlike the 'city' version of the game, is not so complicated that it causes the players to lose the will to live (as william put it). It's a pretty fun game... ...one i'll have to get eventually. I didn't end up winning, but i had the strangest city on the board.

on sunday i got an idea for a new game of my own. i told gigner and llama that the idea has some aspects of most of the games we've played recently and this prompted them to think up the running development title for this game - which is also the title of this post.

until next time...

~PS

well, i think i'm getting over this thing. we're still debating on whether i should go to the doctor, but i've been feeling progressively better the last few days...and it hasn't been a week yet...so...

ginger went and got me started on Baldur's Gate II - which is destined to waste a good bit of my time for a while... ...or, at least, give me something to do in the evenings...

the weekend was pretty slow - with me being sick and all - but it was relaxing which is what was needed. we did get to go to Dice to play 'Ticket to Ride' last night - that's a fun little board game.

~PS

well, aside from the death of penpen, not much is new. (new computer parts on the way! woo-hoo!)

the coffeehouse on friday was pretty cool, though not many people showed up.

saturday was spent doing laundry and wandering around walmart & lowes looking for shelves. (not my idea, believe me)

sunday it freakin' SNOWED. what was who thinking? ...though, at the moment, the weather does seem to be back somewhere close to normal for this time of year....

sheri, ginger, tony & i played some ninja burger last night. that was fun. i'm not going to be surprised if 'i should have recognized your stylish ninja pacifier' shows up on the site somewhere... ...er, somewhere else...

looking forward to some gaming this weekend...

songs i've learned to play this week:
simon & garfunkel - "america"
cream - "white room"

~PS

so things have been pretty cool recently.

we went to the coffeehouse @ watauga on friday and got to see some slides about a trip around south america. there were penguins! this made me happy inside.

on saturday we got to have a little lan party, which was lots of fun... ...and ginger cooked some thai for us too. (thanks ginger :))

the weather has also been really nice lately (until today, anyway) and we've had a couple few picnics over by the creek at milligan - this is a nice thing about living across the street.

we also got a bocce set, which we've been enjoying.

i've also been working on version 2.0 of this website, but this comes as no surprise since tony has already pointed out its inevitability.

other than that, it's been pretty much the same stuff.

songs i've learned to play this week:
caedmon's call "i just don't want coffee"
eli "the lumber song"
pink floyd "wish you were here"

songs i wrote this week:
"two questions"

~PS

has this been a mostly bad week, with some good places or a mostly good week with some bad places?

haven't really done much lately - that is, i haven't worked much on the games (i've only got a little of Europe done for Earth) and i haven't written any songs in quite a while. I've mostly just gone to work and come home (which is bad, because i find that toward the end of the day i start to think in php). At present, i'm waiting to see if flightless birds of questionable alignment and quadrapedic beasts of burden bring me yummy tacos...

anyway, sheri's mom was visiting since last thursday (for anyone who may wonder, this was one of the good things). basically what this is means is that i got to lose a bunch of card games this week. i did get to win half a game of scrabble though.

tomorrow is friday, this is always good. don't know what i'll be up to this weekend, but, even though it probably won't be anything worth talking about, there's a good chance you'll hear about it anyway. really, though...it's your own fault.

~PS